TURA, Sept 15: The man who opened indiscriminate fire from a powerful AK-56 automatic rifle when challenged by Tura police at a check point near Sherwood School and was subsequently shot dead in the retaliatory firing on Tuesday night has been identified as an over-ground worker of two former militant groups that once spread terror in the Garo Hills region.
Robison R Marak of Raksamgre village in Tikrikilla was killed in the gun battle with police on the Daldagre road, close to the school, and an AK-56 rifle along with empty shells and live ammunition recovered from the encounter site.
This has been the first major gun battle in Tura in over seven years. In January 2014, four ANVC-B cadres were shot dead during a police raid on their camp at Darengre village, outskirts of Tura. The police action came hours after militants detonated an IED at the AOC petrol station in the heart of Tura town’s Hawakhana locality, that year.
West Garo Hills Superintendent of Police Vivekanand Singh Rathore issued a statement on Wednesday informing that Tuesday night’s gunman was an over-ground worker of two former outfits- United A’chik Liberation Army (UALA) and A’chik Songna An’pachakgipa Kotok (ASAK), which were once active in the region from 2014 to 2018 engaging in various criminal activities.
After the collapse of the two outfits, primarily due to sustained police operations, the over-ground worker Robison Marak got involved in various criminal activities including extortion and kidnappings in the West Garo Hills district region.
Narrating the sequence of events about the encounter that took place on Tuesday night on the entry point to Daldagre locality, SP Rathore mentioned that they had obtained credible source information about the suspicious movement of some unidentified men, with sophisticated weapons, in and around Daldagre locality.
“Accordingly, a counter-insurgency operation was immediately launched and multiple nakas were put in place in order to verify the input and apprehend the miscreants,” said the district police chief.
He added that it was at approximately 7:30 PM that a police team at one of the naka checking points located on the entry to Daldagre road noticed a bike rider approaching the said naka from the Tura-Garobadha main road side.
“On seeing the police team, the rider jumped off the bike and opened fire on the police team. The police team, acting in self-defense resorted to retaliatory fire, in which the assailant sustained bullet injuries and succumbed to the same,” mentioned SP Rathore.
A search of the encounter site led to the recovery of an AK-56 rifle with 19 numbers of live ammunition, five empty shells of AK ammunition and also 20 empty casings of 9mm pistol ammo.
A black Bajaj Platina motorcycle with no registration number plate that was used by the gunman has also been seized from the encounter site.
Police have now expanded their investigation to identify and locate others who may have been part of the group of armed men to which the deceased ultra belonged.