TURA:
A secret police wireless message by a junior officer to all police stations highlighting the recruitment of around 500 youths for training in Myanmar and Nagaland for the now defunct GNLA outfit has created a buzz in the state, but top police officials have dismissed such claims pointing out that there has been no report of any mass disappearance of youths from the Garo Hills.
A few senior police officials from the region spoke to The Meghalayan on condition of anonymity to clarify the matter.
“The WT message is a routine exercise carried out whenever we are informed about something taking place by sources, it need not always be true. So far, we have not received a single report of any group of people having disappeared anywhere in the Garo Hills,” said one officer.
He added that anyone can make an allegation which, when received, has to be passed on to the rest of the force, irrespective of whether it is authentic or not.
“It is the duty of the force to look into the allegation, whether true or false. In this case, it doesn’t appear to be true but we still need to be alert and keep our personnel on their toes and not be complacent,” said the police official.
Another officer in the rank of district police chief pointed out that the report given by a source on the regrouping needs to be double-checked for authenticity because the number quoted was staggering.
“How can 500 youths go missing for armed training? Even during the peak of their militancy, the GNLA strength never crossed the 300-mark, and from there also it was only a few dozen who had arms training,” the officer said.
He added that the mechanism for an armed uprising with the training of its cadres requires huge investment by way of collection drives and extortion.
“Besides the regular petty cases, we haven’t seen any extortion drive that fits into the mechanism of a rebel group formation,” said the police officer.
Meanwhile, following the alert which mentioned the coal belt region of Nangalbibra in South Garo Hills as one of the epicentres of the mobilisation for the militants, a preliminary probe was carried out this week.
“We didn’t find any case of extortion or mobilisation so far, but will continue our search,” said South Garo Hills SP A T Sangma.
Probe into leak
West Garo Hills police have instituted an inquiry to find out the source of the leak of the secret wireless transmission message for police personnel.
Police sources revealed that the document was leaked to a member of the public by someone from within the Tura SP’s office who had access to the file.
Another source admitted that the person behind the leak has been identified.