Militants admit hand in kidnapping, murder of a trader in Garo Hills: Police
SHILLONG: The five AMEF cadres, who recently surrendered before Baghmara police, did so just to go scot free of a murder they had committed.
This has come to light during their interrogation and they have admitted their involvement in the murder of a trader from Rongsak on October 21.
All the five militants surrendered soon after committing the crime.
Informing this on Saturday, East Garo Hills district police chief D Marak said that the five AMEF cadres had kidnapped the trader — Bharat Singh Shikhawar — from Rongsak.
The kidnappers initially demanded a ransom of Rs 1 crore for the release of Shikhawat, who hailed from Rajasthan.
A relative of the victim contacted police two days after the kidnapping incident.
The militants had set October 21 as the deadline for the relatives of Shikhawat to pay the ransom, said Marak.
Police, meanwhile, had asked the relatives of Shikhawat to go ahead with negotiations as it would give more time to cops to launch operations and save the trader.
The militants had told the relatives that they would starve Shikhawat to death if their demand was not met.
Later, the family of Shikhawat paid Rs 16 lakh to the abductors as ransom amount but despite payment of the ransom amount, Shikhawat was not released and he was ultimately shot dead.
Later, the abductors who are AMEF militants surrendered before Baghmara police which raised a needle of suspicion in the minds of police “since the abductors are from Williamnagar”, the SP said.
Immediately after it was clear that the surrendered cadres were involved in the murder of the trader, the East Garo Hills police arrested them and later they were awarded seven-day police custody
During interrogation, the cadres confessed that they had killed Shikhawat and the mobile phone from which ransom calls were made was also recovered from the possession of the cadres. They also confessed that out of Rs 16 lakh, Rs 12.5 lakh was kept at the parents’ house of one Arkham and Arkham had kept one lakh with him while the five cadres took Rs 50,000 each to spend it on their shopping in Baghmara.
However, the police teams launched the operations and recovered Rs 12.5 lakh from the house of the parents of Arkham, who is a hardcore militant.
“It was a well planned strategy on the part of them to surrender and make good use of the Government policy and literally go scot free,” the senior police official said.