Some 500 villagers in Nagaland’s Mon district have joined the security forces in searching for the last of the three employees of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) abducted on April 21.
Members of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent (ULFA-I) had abducted Junior technician Mohini Mohan Gogoi and Ritul Saikia and junior engineering assistant Alakesh Saikia from the ONGC’s Lakwa oil rig in eastern Assam’s Charaideo district.
A combined team of Army, Assam Rifles and Nagaland police rescued Mr. Gogoi and Alakesh Saikia from a jungle near Totokchingnyu village in Mon district on Friday night following a gunfight with the abductors comprising members of ULFA-I and the Yung Aung faction of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN).
“More than 500 villagers of the area, acquainted with the terrain, are helping the security forces to locate the missing ONGC employee,” a district official said.
The area where the two employees were rescued is about 25 km from the border with Myanmar, where they were being taken. The ULFA-I operates out of the hideout of the NSCN (Yung Aung) across the border in the Sagaing Division of Myanmar.
The two rescued employees, back home in Assam, rubbished the ULFA-I’s claim that they had handed over all the three abducted men to the Nagaland villagers before escaping towards Myanmar.
“Since the security forces have not yet said anything about the fate of the third person, we suspect that he was either killed or kept hidden by them,” the ULFA said in a statement.
“When we were crossing a road in the darkness, we came under a barrage of shots from the security personnel. Two of us jumped into a bush by the roadside. We didn’t find Ritul when he rose after two hours,” Mr. Gogoi told journalists.
Meanwhile, the people of Nangol, the village of the missing employee in eastern Assam’s Jorhat district, asked the ULFA-I to ensure his safe return.
