From Our Correspondent
TURA: A day after kidnapping four businessmen from Damal Asim market in West Garo Hills district, suspected GNLA militants kidnapped three engineers working for a road construction firm from Rongjeng area on Saturday.
The incident occurred between 10:30-11am when the engineers were travelling to Assam through the Rongjeng reserve forest.
A group of heavily armed militants waylaid the vehicle carrying the trio — Manoj Kumar, Depak Kumar and A K Sharma.
The engineers of the Hyderabad-based firm BSC-C & C (JV) are involved in the ongoing construction of a two-lane Shillong-Nongstoin-Tura road billed at an estimated cost of Rs 1,494 crore.
The engineers were coming from the main camp located at Suangre in West Khasi Hills district and going to Goalpara district in Assam via Rongjeng when the incident took place.
Two other occupants of the vehicle, including the driver of the vehicle, who were freed unharmed, reported the incident to Rongmil police camp.
Interestingly, the company’s camp in Suanggre is provided with around a dozen armed police personnel for the security of the officials. But the engineers did not seek escort.
The company’s Samanda village camp is also given security cover.
An operation has been launched in the area to secure the release of the engineers, Meghalaya DGP N Ramachandran told a news agency.
Meanwhile, intelligence officials said the GNLA abducted the engineers with a motive to extort money from the company.
“Yes , we have received some reports earlier on GNLA serving extortion notices to the company and following that we have provided the company officials with ten police personnel to guard them,” the police official said.
On Friday two rice dealers and two ginger traders were kidnapped by the GNLA. The militants later released the two rice dealers, The fate of the two ginger merchants — Indanul Islam Bepari and Mosa Bepari — is not known. (With inputs from agencies)
