Five cops fall prey to GNLA bullets

TURA: Garo Hills police has suffered one of its biggest casualties in its fight against militancy with five state security personnel losing their lives in an ambush laid by a heavily armed group of militants from the banned GNLA outfit in remote South Garo Hills on Tuesday morning.

Armed GNLA militants believed to number over two dozen ambushed a police gypsy with five occupants that was proceeding from Baghmara to Tura in West Garo Hills.

The attack comes a week after the GNLA militant chief Sohan D Shira had threatened retaliation in a big way for the police raid on his private residence at Chachatgre village, 3 kms from Williamnagar town, on October 27.

That operation yielded Rs 3.34 lakh Indian currency, 63,000 Bangladeshi taka along with a powerful satellite phone together with IED bombs, Claymore mine boxes and more than three dozen explosive detonators.

Security has been beefed up in all the districts of Garo Hills following the gruesome attack.

West Garo Hills Deputy Commissioner Pravin Bakshi said that the West Garo Hills police were on high alert and all police stations have been asked to remain vigilant as militants may target the men-in-uniform again.

He informed that police is carrying out intensive patrolling in the entire district including Tura. Checks are being conducted on vehicles at the entry points of Tura to prevent the entry of any militants into the town.

The five police personnel travelling in a white maruti gypsy left Baghmara town, district headquarters of South Garo Hills, in the morning hours and had crossed Sibbari town proceeding to Tura to bring back a suspect who was under police custody when the attack took place at Kolapara just before reaching Ramchengga on the main highway connecting Baghmara to Tura at 11 am.

Police informed that the militants lobbed two grenades from atop a small hillock onto the vehicle which was trying to negotiate a bad portion of the road and a curve.GNLA ambush..

(Contd from P-1) One of the grenades reportedly exploded damaging the vehicle and bringing it to a halt while militants perched on higher ground opened up in a hail of fire on the five occupants of the vehicle.

“The ambush appears to have been laid from three different points over a stretch of around a hundred meters of the road and the militants had dug themselves well in preparation for the arrival of the police vehicle,” said a senior officer from Baghmara who visited the site of the attack.

There appears to have been very little time for the occupants of the police vehicle to react when the attack began.

All five personnel, including the driver, were killed in a hail of fire which opened up from the militants side. The entire vehicle was riddled with bullets leaving very little room for survival.

The militants took away three AK rifles and a carbine machine gun from the slain police personnel along with a sizeable number of ammunition.

Three of the deceased belonged to 3rd MLP Battalion and have been identified as Havildar Dondiram Marak, Constables Bipul Rabha and Marshanstar Nongdhar.

Another of the decease identified as UB Constable Rakki Ch Sangma belonged to South Garo Hills district executive force (DEF) while the driver of the vehicle who was also killed in the ambush was Driver FireMan Lekichyne Ryngklem of the Fire and Emergency Services wing.

The bodies of the deceased have been taken to Baghmara civil hospital for post mortem.