Manipur militants being arrested in December 2007 in Calcutta. File picture

Calcutta, Nov. 7: In a swoop operation, officers of the Military Intelligence of the Eastern Command, along with the Special Task Force of the city police, detained seven Manipuri youths, suspected to be members of the People’s Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (Prepak-Shanti) late this evening.

One of the youths, T. Kantha Singh, is a self-styled lieutenant while others are top-rung members of the outfit, which had claimed responsibility for the October 19 grenade explosion in front of the Manipur chief minister’s bungalow and damaging a vehicle in Imphal.

Singh is also the founder member of an outfit — United People Liberation of Kangleipak, an offshoot of Prepak.

“We have detained them for interrogation. If Manipur police inform us about their criminal antecedents, then we would arrest and produce them in court. As of now, there are no city links,” said Jawed Shamim, the city detective chief.

Earlier in 2007, two Manipuri students were arrested from Calcutta as they were wanted in Manipur for being members of Prepak.

Insiders claimed Singh, in his early thirties, had turned up with one of his close assistants, Abiyoma Singh, at an auction house on Lenin Sarani here — next to Jyoti Cinema — after they learnt about an auction of old cars belonging to the Border Roads Organisation. “The idea was to extort money from people from the Northeast who were planning to buy the vehicles. Singh’s reason for staying in Calcutta was to oversee any Northeast-related auction in the city and then extort money,” said a senior intelligence official. “This money would have been pumped back to their outfit in Manipur.”

Apart from the duo, there were four others, including Chittaranjan Singh, a senior PLA member, overseeing financial activities of the outfit. He had put up in Manipur Bhawan and turned up to collect money from those winning a bid to buy the vehicles. Representatives from Assam, Nagaland and even Arunachal Pradesh were also present at the bidding venue, insiders in Military Intelligence said.

Kantha Singh, sources claimed, had put up in a house in Madhyamgram with Abiyoma for the past month while the rest had turned up barely a week back and put up in lodges around the Chowringhee area.

Around 5.30 this evening, the joint team turned up in plainclothes and rounded up the seven even before those present at the auction venue could realise what was going on. Late tonight, they were brought for interrogation.

“The photographs have already been sent to the Manipur police. A team from Manipur is scheduled to arrive tomorrow and subsequently, once they produce the charges against the seven, the youths will be arrested,” said a senior STF official.