Bodies of five abducted SSB personnel found

The five SSB men, including a cook, were picked up along with one Babul Kalita of Mora-Dhansiri village in Udalguri district by a group of youth who came in a Tata Sumo, a Maruti van and several motorbikes on May 20. Kalita’s body was recovered from an adjacent village the next morning.

As the SSB men remained untraced, the police suspected it to be the handiwork of the NDFB, with which the Centre had renewed a ceasefire by six months only on Sunday. When the issue of abduction of the SSB men came up in the meeting between Union Home Ministry officials and a delegation of the NDFB, the latter flatly denied it.

The slain SSB personnel are H Lakshap, P Rabi Singh, T Vaiphei, S A Sangtam and Krishna Bahadur Chetri.

Though the Government has released all the NDFB cadres who had been under arrest over the years, the Assam Government is understood to have conveyed it to the MHA that NDFB cadres have been carrying out large-scale extortion in the Bodo-dominated districts.

SSB cautions its men

NEW DELHI: Rattled by the killing of five jawans allegedly by Bodo extremists, the Sashastra Seema Bal has issued strict instructions to all its battalions not to allow anybody to venture out after the roll call in the evening. A source at the SSB said the unfortunate incident would not have happened if the rules had been followed. ‘‘Barring special occasions, nobody is allowed to go out after the roll call at 7.30 p.m. The SSB is entrusted with guarding the Indo-Bhutan and Indo-Nepal borders. Its facilities in Assam are mostly used for training purposes.