Police today arrested five persons, including a woman and a child and recovered a huge cache of arms and ammunition of the NDFB-Songbijit militant outfit from Chirang and Kokrajhar districts of Assam, a senior official said.
The five persons, including a 15-year old girl, used as a courier by the NDFB-S to transport their weapons, were nabbed along with the vehicle they were travelling in at Kajalgaon in Chirang district by a joint team of the police and SSB, IGP L R Bishnoi told reporters here.
A pistol, 657 AK-47 rifle bullets, five tracer bullets of 303 rifles and five mobile hand sets were seized along with the vehicle coming from Dimapur to Kokrajhar in Bodoland Territorial Area Districts (BTAD), Bishnoi said.
The five apprehended persons were identified as Belsree Narzary, Ansuman Basumatary, Ranjit Barua, Debashish Rabha and the minor girl, the IGP said, adding interrogation was on.
Bishnoi said the National Democratic Front of Bodoland-S was using woman and children as couriers for transporting their arms and ammunition to deceive security forces.
In neighbouring Kokrajhar district of BTAD, he said an encounter took place between NDFB-S and police this afternoon at Serfunguri but there was no casualty on any side though arms and ammunition were recovered there.
Two AK-56 rifles, 175 ammunitions of AK-47 rifles, two magazines, one grenade, four mobiles and Rs 3,500 in cash were recovered from the encounter site, Bishnoi said.
In yet another incident in Chirang district today, police chased an NDFB-S insurgent at Bijni Panbari but he managed to flee leaving behind his motorcycle, the IGP said, adding a search operation has been launched to trace him.
