Imphal, Sept. 1: The CRPF has created a flutter in Manipur by claiming that a Maruti Gypsy used by the militant Zomi Revolutionary Army (ZRA) belonged to a son of the chairman of the Assembly?s hill areas committee.

An identity card issued by the army was also seized from an arrested ZRA militant.

The CRPF today said in a statement that it arrested six activists of the militant group along with six sophisticated weapons while they were travelling in a Maruti Gypsy from Churachandpur on Tuesday. The Gypsy belonged to the son of Congress MLA and hill areas committee chairman S. Songchinkhup, it said.

The CRPF further claimed that an identity card issued by 5 Mountain Division was seized from the arrested militant, David K. Ngaite. The identity card was issued for intelligence gathering , the paramilitary force said.

The militants were remanded in police custody by the district chief judicial magistrate yesterday.

Songchinkhup, when contacted over phone, admitted that the vehicle belonged to his son Tual Minthang. He however claimed that it was taken away at gunpoint by some militants from Minthang?s house in Churachandpur a few days ago .

Strongly denying any link between the militant group and his son, the Congress legislator said the hijacking was reported to the Churachandpur police station immediately after the vehicle was taken away. No army official was available for comment on the claim of the CRPF about recovering the identity card.

The ZRA is the armed wing of the Zomi Re-unification Organisation (ZRO), which was formed in 1993 with the goal of political re-unification of the ethnic Zo people scattered across Manipur, Mizoram, Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh and Myanmar into one administrative unit.

K. Marx Vaiphei, secretary of the ZRO, in a statement earlier this month claimed that the organisation reached an understanding with the security forces to cease hostility for a period of six months, beginning August 1.

The army authorities in Manipur are silent on the claim, neither confirming nor denying it.

In another unrelated development, some armed miscreants turned back a large number of empty supply trucks bound for Dimapur, at Sekmai in Imphal West and Sapermeina in Senapati district along the Imphal-Kohima highway today. About 30 trucks were headed for Dimapur when they were stopped at Sapermeina and documents of the vehicles seized.

A similar incident was reported from Sekmai. The armed persons reportedly told the truckers not to use the Imphal-Kohima highway. They were instead asked to take NH 53, linking Imphal and Silchar.