SHILLONG: The Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA), the most dreaded rebel outfit in the Garo Hills, suffered several setbacks towards the end after beginning the year with bloodshed and a series of kidnaps.
In the beginning of the year, GNLA carried out IED blasts in Williamnagar in which nine persons, including a woman, were injured.
Shortly after the blast, a small-time ginger trader from neighbouring Assam, who was kidnapped by GNLA militants in East Garo Hills, was executed during a gun battle with police commandos, who raided the outfit’s hideout in Songsak region.
The abduction spree did not end there as GNLA cadres captured seven traders from Assam’s Goalpara at gunpoint while they were returning from a weekly market at Dokongsi in Kharkutta region.
As the ring of terror spread, police launched aggressive and prolonged operations against GNLA and were successful in many instances to clip the rebels’ wings. Several hideouts of the outfit were raided and the group lost many of its cadres.
The police onslaught was followed by several surrenders both by top leaders from different regions and cadres.
As many as 10 militants from the A.Chik Matgrik Elite Force, who had been operating in the North Garo Hills region despite their top leadership giving up their armed struggle last December, finally surrendered at Sambrak near Wageasi handing over an assortment of weapons.
Police also intensified their combing operations and launched operation Hailstorm 3 to build pressure on the insurgents after which more than 70 GNLA cadres, including its ‘finance secretary’ Rakkam D. Shira and dreaded commander Hedeo Ch Momin, surrendered in different intervals and gave up huge caches of arms and ammunition.
The surrenders weakened the outfit whose illegal activities, however, continued. In September, suspected GNLA cadres kidnapped nine traders from Assam near Chokpot in South Garo Hills. The traders, all from Mankachar town in Assam’s South Salmara district, were on their way to Silkigre weekly market, which is around 14 km from Chokpot town, in three pick-up vans when a group of suspected GNLA militants armed with rifles and pistols stopped the last vehicle near Songotagre village around 5.30am.
But the worst blow to the rebel outfit came with the Centre’s demonetisation move as it truncated the terror finance channel. Many militants in Garo Hills were arrested with cash while the militants and over ground workers were trying to convert their black money into white and many were arrested while they were trying to exchange the notes in banks in Garo Hills.
While GNLA continued to make headlines in Garo Hills, Khasi Hills remained marred by rapes, murders, drug abuse and trafficking of young girls.
Crime against women and minors
While there were uncountable cases of rapes and molestation in the region, the mysterious missing and recovery of the body of a young girl from Umlyngka sent shockwaves across the State.
The girl went missing from her house at Umlyngka on July 24 and later her body was recovered from Damsite, Umiam, on July 29. The family had earlier claimed that she came out of the house after receiving a phone call.
The cause of her death is yet to be ascertained since the post-mortem report was inconclusive and the FSL report from Hyderabad is still awaited. Thirty-nine persons, both male and female friends of the victim who were part of the WhatsApp group, were quizzed and it is still not clear how and under what circumstances she died.
While the city was still reeling from the shock of the Umlyngka incident, another incident followed putting a question mark on the law and order. A 16-year-old pregnant girl, Salma Ahmed, went missing from Laban on August 9 and her body was found from Umiam Lake on August 19.
Another 19-year-old girl was brutally raped and murdered in Upper Shillong. The girl went missing from her home. Later, her family found her body in the jungle close to her residence around midnight. She was declared dead when taken to the Civil Hospital.
Soon the mother of the accused handed over her son to police and action has been initiated against the accused.
Apart from Shillong, rapes and murders were also reported from other parts of the state.
In August, two minor girls went missing from BSF Primary School at Nongmynsong. The mother of one the missing girls, Pema Sherpa, filed an FIR that her eight-year-old daughter, a student of Class IV, and one of her classmates and friend Anisha S. Bhagat went missing during school hours.
Rahul Lama, a relative of Pema Sherpa, informed that the girl went to school but went missing from there as she did not board the school bus for home. Later, it was found that both the girls boarded a train from Guwahati and reached New Delhi. Luckily, two girls were spotted by Railway police and they were rescued.
Another incident took place, when a joint team of Shillong and New Delhi police raided a house in Kotla in the Capital where an 18-year-old girl from the city was kept. Three pimps were arrested.
The teenager had gone missing from Rynjah on July 23 and an FIR was filed by Impulse NGO. Delhi police, with assistance from its Meghalaya counterpart, rescued the girl on August 18.
Garo Hills again came back to news in September, this time for rape case. The principal in-charge and a teacher of Kendriya Vidyalaya in Tura were arrested for allegedly raping two students of the school.
Following the rape case, Yogesh Joshi, the acting principal of Kendriya Vidyalaya in Tura and main accused in the rape case, were suspended by West Garo Hills DC Pravin Bakshi. The other accused, teacher Deepjyoti Das, was also terminated from service.
As the year was about to end, another case of trafficking surfaced in Shillong when police conducted a raid on Marvelene’s Inn and rescued a minor girl who was being trafficked.
In this case, police arrested three pimps, one of the hotel staff and even a customer who had sex with the 14-year-old girl.
The name of the sitting MLA from Mawhati, Julias Dorphang, also figured in the FIR filed by the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights wherein he was accused of having sex with the minor girl in a guest house in Motinagar.
Lady imposter dupes youths
Several people were also cheated on the pretext of employment in the state and one such case was unearthed when as many as 450 youths from Mairang were duped of over Rs 2 crore by a female imposter posing as a sub-inspector of Meghalaya Police.
The accused, Evangeline Kharbuli (39), posed as a messiah for hundreds of unemployed candidates from humble backgrounds looking for jobs in the government sector.
By claiming that she has been helping unemployed youths all along, assisting them in securing jobs as home guards, peons, chowkidars and LDAs, Kharbuli collected Rs 2,00,25000 from the unsuspecting victims.
Drugs abuse cases
In addition, Shillong this year saw a huge rise in case of drug abuse and scores of drug peddlers were arrested from different parts of the city and the matter was even discussed on the floor of the House.
In one of their biggest catches in Shillong city, Customs sleuths recovered one kilogram of heroin along with approximately 20,000 tablets of the drug Methamphetamine (or meth) besides apprehending three people in this connection.
Three persons, including a woman, were apprehended from a city hotel along with the huge cache of drugs. The arrested persons hailed from Manipur and Nagaland. The heroin that was found in their possession was 99.9 per cent pure and the total value of the seized item was around Rs 3 crore in the international market.
Major accidents
Apart from rapes and cheating, one of the most devastating incidents of road accident took place in East Jaintia Hills this year where 29 people were killed and nine others injured near Sonapur Mandir in East Jaintia Hills district.
A night bus of Arhans Coach on its way from Silchar to Guwahati lost control and plunged into a 500-foot gorge near Sonapur Mandir around 9. 30 pm.
Another disaster was reported in Mawphlang where six members of a family, including a 35-year-old pregnant woman and her seven-month-old baby, died from electrocution. The incident that happened at Nongthjymmaineng in Mawphlang prompted the district administration to order a magisterial inquiry.
