From Our Correspondent
TURA: A major consignment of arms destined for GNLA’s Sohan D Shira was seized by East Garo Hills police team at Chinabat after they intercepted a vehicle that was coming from Assam and heading towards Williamnagar on Thursday morning.
The consignment included AK rifles and a under barrel grenade launcher (UBGL) and was clandestinely being brought from Dimapur.
“We had intelligence inputs about a possible shipment of arms for the GNLA from another state and our teams were patrolling the possible routes to intercept the consignment when we came across the vehicle with the weapons at Chinabat,” revealed East Garo Hills SP J F K Marak.
Police teams including SWAT units and CRPF CoBRA personnel who were on the lookout for the shipment since 8am noticed a parked vehicle with three occupants at Chinabat village at around 10am.
The men were reportedly waiting to handover the consignment to GNLA overground workers.
They abandoned the Scorpio vehicle which was parked conspicuously around a corner on a diversionary path leading to the main road at Chinabat village located on the main highway between Tura and Williamnagar. The vehicle contained three automatic rifles, an AK-56, an AK mounted with a bipod stand along with a drum magazine and a 5.56 calibre AK rifle fitted with a UBGL. Two live UBGL grenades and six rounds of different caliber ammunition were also recovered from the vehicle. The drum magazine, which can hold as many as eighty rounds of ammunition, was concealed inside the body of the vehicle after it had been wielded with a blow torch. One of the three occupants identified as Bit A Sangma of Nagaland was caught after a hot chase while his two friends Taklu and Kari Ao managed to give the police the slip. All three hailed from Dimapur, police said.
This is one of the rare cases of sophisticated arms en-route to GNLA which was intercepted by Garo Hills police. A few months back, security forces in Assam with the help of Meghalaya police intercepted another arms consignment meant for the GNLA at Gorchuk, on the outskirts of Guwahati city, and arrested GNLA linkmen and arms dealers.