TURA: The stockpile of weapons amassed by the banned Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA) during its reign appears to have been massive with police continuing to recover arms and ammunitions stashed away by the outfit in the jungles of East Garo Hills.
Following leads provided by the villagers of Bawegre and Dorengkigre police search teams from the district on Friday morning were able to recover a huge cache of hidden arms and ammunitions from different locations in the area.
The recovered arms included 347 HMG rounds, 2 AK Rifle bodies, 1 AK rifle without magazine, 4 pistols, 6 pistol magazines, 6 shotgun cartridges, 52 numbers of 7.65 mm pistols ends, 1 Chinese grenade, 57 numbers of 7.62 SLR rounds, 63 numbers of GNLA seals, 4 IED remotes, 1 walkie talkie, 9 remote IED circuits, 28 electronic detonators, 7 bullet charger clips, 5 UBGL cells, 1 helmet, 2 SBBL shotguns, 485 AK 47 bullets, 104 rounds of .303 rifle, 2659 rounds of 7.7 mm rifle and 4 pieces of HMG stands.
Meanwhile, the district police are all praise for the villagers without whose help the recovery would not have been possible.
“It is all thanks to the villagers this time that such a huge recovery was made possible. More and more villagers are coming forward to help the police in recovering the hidden weapons which would pose a serious threat to the safety and security of the people if they fell into the wrong hands,” East Garo Hills Superintendent of Police, R T G Momin said.
Since the killing of GNLA ‘commander-in-chief’ Sohan D Shira, the recovery of hidden GNLA arms has continued with the help of villagers. However, police are still not ruling out the recovery of more arms in the days to come as they feel there may be many more hidden weapons and ammunition which would have been secretly kept by the cadres without the knowledge of their leaders.