A police officer was seriously injured on Friday in a gunfight between security forces and militants from the United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent (ULFA-I), an extremist group headed by Paresh Baruah. Two persons, including an ULFA-I member, were reportedly killed in the encounter.
Unconfirmed reports said Bhaskar Kalita, the officer in-charge of Bordumsa Police Station in eastern Assam’s Tinsukia district, later succumbed to his injuries.
A joint team of the Assam Police and the CRPF launched a search operation following reports that a group of hardcore ULFA-I members had taken shelter in a house in a village on the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border. According to reports. the security forces, led by Mr. Kalita, came under fire as they reached the site; grenades were also thrown at them.
“The team launched an operation based on specific intelligence inputs about the presence of a group of ULFA-I rebels. OC of Bordumsa police station was reportedly injured in the incident and shifted to the hospital,” Assam’s Director General of Police Kuladhar Saikia, told The Hindu .
Sources said two others — an ULFA militant and a local — were killed in the encounter that started at about 4 p.m. Many villagers reportedly fled to escape being caught in the crossfire.
