TURA, Nov 12: Live rounds of ammunition – the size of a man’s hand and used in heavy machine guns – was on Thursday unearthed by West Garo Hills Police from a jungle area in Damalgre, just 15 kilometre away from Tura.
“We had credible inputs that three boxes of high-grade ammunition are buried in Upper Damalgre, between West and South West Garo Hills jurisdiction. A team headed by DSP Tura launched operations and we uncovered 254 anti-armour ammunition buried inside Naragre village reserve forest under Damalgre police station,” informed Superintendent of Police, MGR Kumar.
Given that the area was once the jungle route for the banned GNLA outfit, police believe it was buried by the group.
Police also do not rule out the ULFA gifting the GNLA this powerful ammunition since it is the only major outfit in the North East, after the NSCN, to have in its possession an ammo that can damage bulletproof vehicles, other armour-plated vehicles and can even take down a low-flying chopper when used from a gun carriage.
A similar number of such powerful armour-piercing ammunitions along with several dozen RPGs belonging to the ULFA were recovered from Raksamgre region by Garo Hills Police way back in 2003.
It was the biggest consignment of ammunition ever to be seized from a single location in Garo Hills. The ULFA had concealed the RPGs inside an underground water tank buried inside a forest.