TURA: A road construction firm engineer who was abducted by gunmen a week ago has been successfully rescued by West Garo Hills police in a daring operation at Gabil area on Wednesday afternoon.
Police commandos raided the hideout of the criminal gang who were keeping engineer Waseem Ahmed captive in Gabil at around 4:30 pm leading to a brief exchange of fire during which the criminals abandoned their victim and even dropped two double barrel (DBBL) shotguns before fleeing for their lives. The police team took the engineer into safe custody and escorted him back to Tura even as flush out operations are continuing to nab the gang members.
The assistant engineer was working for the Hyderabad based construction company BSC-C&C JV executing the Tura-Nongstoin-Shillong road project when he was kidnapped on September 29 evening while returning from the construction site at Rongap-Megagre village to the company base camp at Samanda on a motorcycle.
Waseem Ahmed is the fourth company executive to have been kidnapped by armed men in Garo Hills in the last four years.
In October 2012, suspected militants of the outlawed GNLA abducted three road engineers of the same company while they were travelling to neighbouring Assam in a vehicle.
Manoj Kumar, Deepak Kumar and A.K. Sharma were kidnapped by a group of heavily armed GNLA rebels after their vehicle was stopped at Dambuk Aga reserve forest in East Garo Hills district.
Two other occupants of the vehicle, including the driver of the vehicle, who were freed unharmed, reported the incident to Rongmil police camp. The trio was subsequently released unharmed after the rebel group reportedly received ransom.
