2 min readAizawalJul 13, 2014 06:13 PM IST
First published on: Jul 13, 2014 at 06:13 PM IST
Mandal, 25, was on assignment for Noida-based Telecom Network Solutions, a company which was working on a contract for Airtel at the time.
Mizoram Police have arrested four Bru militants believed to have been involved in various armed kidnappings including of West Bengal-based telecommunications professional Deep Mandal, who was kidnapped with two others and held for 119 days in the jungles of eastern Bangladesh before being released on March 23.
A team of the state police’s Criminal Investigation Department (Special Branch) officers caught the four men at a hotel in Silchar, headquarters of Assam’s Cachar district, late last night and have brought them to Aizawl.
The prize catch has been identified as Thlamuana, 36, who is believed to have been the main liaison during Mandal’s kidnapping ordeal and the person who made ransom demands and was in touch with the Mandal family.
The other three (all in their early 20s) are thought to be members of an armed criminal gang that has most recently called itself Bru Democratic Front of Mizoram (BDFM), the group Thlamuana is also a senior member of.
All four are residents of the Naisingpara relief camp for internally displaced Bru tribals, a senior police officer said. Naisingpara is the largest among six relief camps in North Tripura district of Tripura, and Mizoram Police have in the past caught armed criminals from there as well
Armed criminal gangs populated by Bru tribals have in the past few years aided Tripura-based militant group National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) in carrying out kidnappings for ransom in Mizoram’s western areas bordering Bangladesh — the modus operandi being that these kidnapped persons are whisked away across the international border and out of reach of Indian security agencies — and ransom demands made from there.
Mandal, 25, was on assignment for Noida-based Telecom Network Solutions, a company which was working on a contract for Airtel at the time.
Three men believed to have been involved in the kidnapping had also been caught in May.
Mandal, 25, was on assignment for Noida-based Telecom Network Solutions, a company which was working on a contract for Airtel at the time.
Share
