Giving a severe blow to the bid of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland's Khaflang faction for having a foothold in Arunachal Pradesh, a joint team of Lohit and Diyun police and Assam Regiment personnel have arrested five of its cadres.
A 9 mm pistol, two magazines, 29 live rounds, pen drives, mobile sets and incriminating documents including 264 extortion notes, seal of the organisation seized during the joint operation on Friday.
According to official sources those arrested included NSCN (K) self styled revenue secretary and intelligence of Lohit district Hongloan Lowakhao alias Paul along with four of his accomplices, namely Biswanath Pait, Chow Pintina Choupoo, Chow Sultana Munglang and Faki Wangsa.
Lowakhao, a resident of Paniduria village near Khonsa in Tirap district, who was a NSCN (M) cadre till 2000 and joined the NSCN (K) in 2010 and was on a bid to make an inroad to Lohit and Changlang districts, the sources said.
Alerted by extortion notices served by the NSCN (K), Diyun police led by police station OC inspector P Kalita laid a trap and arrested Pait, an NSCN (K) linkman in Modai village on December 20 before the Lohit police and Assam Regiment personnel joined to conduct a joint operation in Namsai (Lohit district) and Diyun (Changlang district) areas on Friday which resulted in the arrest and recovery.
Based on spot interrogation of the linkman, a search operation was launched that led to the recovery of one Austria-make 9 mm pistol (Steyr), two magazines, 29 live rounds of pistol, seven mobile phones, cash amounting 5536, dao, knife and other personnel belongings besides incriminating documents.
The outfit had just started setting its feet in this area by distributing demand notes for over Rs one crore to various contractors, business personnel, transporters and prominent shop owners.
Apparently, this was the first stage of infiltration of NSCN in the area. As per established modus operandi, they would subsequently target the middle class people including small shop keepers, professionals etc before collecting extortion money from every inhabitant of the area, small or big amount.
However, the arrest has been lauded by the locals as great success for the security forces that would provide great relief to the local population.
The alert security forces have succeeded in nipping the problem in the bud that would demoralise the underground element, the sources added.
Tirap and Changlang districts (including Longding) have been witnessing turf wars by both NSCN (IM) and (K) factions very often than not for the last few years for area dominance but the UGs have not been successful in their bids, the sources claimed.
But the innocent people of these districts have been victimised by both the factions with numerous cases of murders, kidnapping, extortions and other forms of violence reported despite presence of security forces.
