Garo Hills school teacher kidnapped
TURA: Unidentified miscreants, who kidnapped a teacher of Tura Christian Girls Higher Secondary School on Sunday from neighbouring Assam’s Mancachar town, have demanded Rs 5 crore for his release.
The 45-year-old teacher — Iqbal Rafique — had gone to Mancachar bus stand to collect a consignment dispatched in the Guwahati-Mancachar night bus when the incident is believed to have taken place.
The distance between Iqbal Rafique’s home and the Mancachar bus stand is said to be less than a kilometer.
When he failed to return home his family made several attempts to get in touch with him but without success.
Their concerns grew when the consignment arrived at the house without Rafique and was told by the bearer that he had not turned up to collect it.
At around 2:30pm of the same day a call was made to the father of the school teacher by an unknown person who informed the family that Iqbal was in their custody.
The unidentified caller, speaking in fluent Bengali, demanded Rs 5 crore for the release of the teacher and set a two-day deadline for the family.
The victim’s father, a retired teacher of Mancachar deficit college, tried to reason with the alleged abductors to no avail as the man on the other line insisted that the family give in to their ransom demand.
As news of the abduction spread police from both Assam and Garo Hills began search operations to locate the victim and arrest the culprits.
The involvement of either militant groups or petty criminal gangs having links with anti-social elements from nearby Bangladesh are not being ruled out. The Bangladesh border is just a stone’s throw from Mancachar.
Operations have been simultaneously launched in Mancachar region of Haat Singimari sub-division in Assam, and the bordering areas of South West and West Garo Hills districts of Meghalaya also.
An FIR has been filed with police at Ampati in South-West Garo Hills district by the principal of the school where the victim worked and the same has been forwarded to Mancachar since the case falls under Assam.