Gang spreads terror in border village

TURA: A criminal gang active in a Garo Hills village near the international border is demanding money from villagers and intimidating them with firearms for the past five days.
The three-member gang at Gopinath Killa had demanded several lakhs from a local school teacher more than a week ago. Last Thursday, the gang, armed with pistols and daggers, barged into his house and asked for the money. The middle English school teacher tried to talk out of the situation but in vein. One of the miscreants shot at him but the bullet missed and hit the teacher’s younger brother.
The group has threatened to come back to collect the extortion money. The members are believed to be locals.
The village is approximately 10-12 km from Mahendraganj town in South West Garo Hills district. Though Gopinath Killa has a BSF border outpost and the place of incident is barely 300 m from the paramilitary camp, no action has been taken to ensure security of the villagers who are spending sleepless nights.
“The BSF personnel did undertake night patrolling after the incident but they can’t do that always. Police have not been able to identify or nab the armed group though some of the villagers claimed to have spotted the members of the same armed gang moving in and around Gopinath Killa even after Thursday night’s incident,” said a close relative of the school teacher.
This is not the first time the villagers here are facing threats from armed groups. Last year, a school teacher who had taken a bank loan of Rs 4 lakh for constructing a house was slapped with a demand note of Rs 10 lakh by an armed gang. With no other option, the teacher had to stop construction.
The number of petty criminal groups has increased in Garo Hills in the recent past. Locals believe that some of those involved were in militant outfits and had either surrendered or been arrested and released on bail as was the recent case of the Selbalgre encounter in which arrested A’chik Revolutionary Army (ARA) cadre had gotten out of jail.