Jalpaiguri, Jan. 3: The Indian Army last night handed over 12 more Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) militants to the Jalpaiguri police at the Binnaguri cantonment. Among the dozen were some top guns of the outfit as well as freshers, namely cadets of the fourth batch.

“All of them were residents of the Bucca camp of the KLO in Bhutan. In the course of the operations undertaken by the Royal Bhutan Army (RBA), they were arrested. The RBA handed them over to the Indian Army, which put them in our custody last night. A substantial amount of arms has been recovered from them,” said Jalpiguri superintendent of police Siddh Nath Gupta.

The seized arms included one universal machine gun, one AK-47 rifle, four self-loading rifles, two .303 rifles, two G-3 (made in China) rifles and 5,354 rounds of live cartridges.

Among the batch of militants handed over last night were Sailen Roy and Deep Chand, who were involved in the shootout of August 17, 2002, in which five CPM functionaries were gunned down at the party office in Dhupguri, said the district police chief.

Also caught was Hiranmoy, who was the doctor of the KLO camps. He had treated Milton Burma, the KLO commander-in-chief when he sustained bullet injuries in an encounter with the army on October 6, 2002, on the banks of the Sankosh.

Haridas Singh, who was a KLO recruiter, was among those handed over. “He used to convince youths from the districts of north Bengal and escort them to the camps,” Gupta said.

The freshers arrested earlier as part of Operation All Clear, launched by the Royal Bhutan Army to flush out militants camping in the country, have admitted to police officials during interrogation that they were “trapped by the senior militants”.

“The hardcore KLO militants had assured them good food and money and taken them for training. Most of the youths of the fourth batch were unaware of the motto of the KLO and complained to us that they were assured of a good income which lured them to join the KLO,” a senior police official, who is a member of the investigating team, said.

The 12 were produced in the court of the Jalpaiguri sub-divisional judicial magistrate today and remanded in police custody for seven days.

College ruckus

Students of Raigunj Polytechnic College kicked up a ruckus on Saturday following reports that a student had tried to commit suicide after she learnt that she would not be allowed to take the second semester examinations.

They blamed the authorities for the incident as they had raised her hopes by issuing her an admit card for the examinations ignoring the instruction of the National Council for Technical Education that those who had failed four papers of an earlier semester should not be allowed to take further tests.

The girl, who is undergoing treatment at a local hospital after consuming poison on December 31, had failed four papers in the first semester.