GUWAHATI: A Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) of the Army was rescued by the security forces hours after his abduction by unidentified armed men in strife-torn Manipur on Friday.
The middle-aged JCO, Konsam Kheda Singh, was rescued from the Waikhong area in Kakching district. When reports last came in, he was at the Waikhong Police Station. Officials said Singh, a Meitei, was at home on leave when the armed men, who came in a car, carried out the abduction.
The incident took place at Charangpat Mamang Leikai in the Thoubal district of the Imphal Valley. The motive behind the abduction was not known.
After the abduction, police, Army, Border Security Force and Assam Rifles had launched a massive search operation to rescue the JCO. This was the fourth incident since the ethnic violence in the state broke out on May 3 last year wherein soldiers while on duty or leave or their relatives have been targeted by armed miscreants.
In September last year, a former Assam Regiment soldier, Serto Thangthang Kom, was kidnapped and killed by an unidentified armed group. He was posted in the state’s Leimakhong with the Defence Service Corps. Two months later, an unidentified armed group had kidnapped four persons while they were travelling in an SUV from the hill district of Churachandpur to Leimakhong and killed them. The four were family members of an Indian Army soldier serving in Jammu and Kashmir.
A fifth passenger, the father of the soldier, managed to escape with injuries.Next, an Additional Superintendent of Police was attacked in his house in Imphal on February 27 this year. The attackers were identified as members of Meitei radical group Arambai Tenggol. After the incident, police commandos, posted in the Imphal Valley staged an “arms down” protest. Top police officials had also warned that if the force is not allowed to perform its normal duties, the government might be compelled to deploy central forces and impose Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act in the valley.