GUWAHATI: Indian security forces gunned down six insurgents of the Karbi People’s Liberation Tigers (KPLT) in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district on Friday. Agencies reported that two of the slain militants were top leaders of the group.
Defence sources said the operation was carried out by the Army in collaboration with the Assam police. The encounter took place in a reserve forest area of Nambar in the early hours of Friday.
The KPLT is an insurgent group that broke away from Karbi National Liberation Front in 2011 after the latter group declared a ceasefire. Its objective is to carve out an autonomous Karbi state out of Assam.
Defence spokesman Col Suneet Newton told New Indian Express that upon receiving a tip-off about militant movement in the Banipathar area under the Bokajan police station, the a joint team of the Army and the state police launched an operation on Thursday afternoon.
Around 1 am on Friday, the troops came upon a camp of the insurgents in the forest. In the engagement that followed, four militants were gunned down. Two others who fled under the cover of darkness were chased down and shot dead.
According to him, the slain militants included a self-styled ‘operation commander’ and an ‘area commander’ of the insurgent outfit. A large quantity of arms, ammunition and provisions stores were recovered from the site. Col.
Newton said this was one of the most successful operations against militants in the Northeast in recent times. It leaves the KPLT, the most prominent of the anti-national groups active in Karbi Anglong, decimated, he claimed.