Top GNLA leader held in Bengaluru
TURA: In a crippling blow to the banned GNLA outfit and a major boost for security forces, the vice-chairman of the militant group has been arrested from the heart of Bengaluru city in Karnataka where he had taken shelter with his family and was issuing command orders to the cadres at the behest of his military chief Sohan D Shira.
A special police team from Meghalaya jointly operating with Karnataka police intercepted GNLA vice chairman Rapius Ch Sangma, aged 35, shortly after he dropped off his two children to school on Monday morning.
The vice chairman of GNLA was riding a motorcycle bearing Karnataka registration number and was tailed by Meghalaya sleuths in plains clothes who caught up with him just as he was leaving the Annanagar society school in Sabengnagar locality, under Hebigori police station of Bengaluru at around 9 am.
The militant leader’s eldest daughter was reportedly studying in standard three along with the younger brother in a school.
He was surrounded by special police teams from the two states as he was leaving the school area and taken into custody. Later he led police to his apartment in Samdeng Valley Phase II where he had been residing for the last few weeks with his wife and two children.
The militant leader’s wife, Rekha G Momin, a resident of Nongshram village under Rongjeng, was also questioned by the police team.
“We had been on his tail for over a week since we received concrete leads from our sources. It was initially very difficult to locate him since he was changing his residential location every few months,” revealed a top police source from Shillong.
While no weapons were recovered from him or his residence, police seized several dozen mobile SIM cards that were being used by the GNLA for communication purposes.
His arrest is expected to further throw light on the activities, both militant and financial, of the GNLA and its network in several cities across the country and beyond, including Bangladesh, where its foreign secretary Bikdot Nikjang Marak is believed to be holed up.
The GNLA vice-chairman had previously worked in the rural department sector of IFAD in Garo Hills. He later became a block programme officer under the National Rural Health Mission in Rongjeng before plunging into the political arena to contest the Meghalaya Assembly elections in 2013.
He contested the state elections from Rongjeng constituency on Samajwadi Party ticket was defeated by the Congress candidate. Soon after the elections, he vanished from the area only to resurface inside a jungle camp of Sohan D Shira as the GNLA’s vice chairman.
He soon became a regular face of the outfit in social media websites frequently putting across the organization’s views and objectives until his dramatic arrest down south.
Encounter: Meanwhile, a PTI report from Goalpara said that a suspected GNLA militant and a linkman of the outfit were killed in an encounter with the Army in lower Assam’s Goalpara district on Monday.
Army sources said the GNLA insurgent identified as Singbard Sangma and his linkman Akhtar Hussain fired upon an army patrolling team at Hatlapara and the troops also retaliated leading to an encounter.
Sangma was killed on the spot after a fierce exchange of fire, while Hussain succumbed to his wounds in Goalpara Civil Hospital, the sources said.
Two pistols and a hand grenade were recovered from the slain ultra who, along with the linkman, were travelling to Guwahati in a car when the encounter took place, they said.
Hussain’s family, however, claimed he was not involved with any underground outfit.