Guwahati/Itanagar, Feb. 10: The 39 Arunachalee boys who were reported abducted recently were not hostages but willing participants in the NSCN (Khaplang)’s recruitment campaign, the militant group has claimed.

A spokesman for the outfit, P. Tikhak, said from his hideout along the Indo-Myanmar border today that the government’s statements were attempts to save face rather than the truth. He said all 39 Arunachalee boys who came to join the NSCN(K) ranks of their own will were scanned for eligibility and some of them sent back because they were “underage”.

This contradicts the police’s version of how the drama unfolded.

The police maintain that the boys were “forced” to join the outfit and that two FIRs — one at Longding and another at Pongchou police station — were registered after they went missing. A senior official said a joint rescue operation by the police, army and paramilitary forces from February 8 led to 15 of the boys being reunited with their families.

Chief minister Dorjee Khandu complained about the “abductions” to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his recent visit to the state. The All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union made the same allegation.

Tikhak said the chief minister and the student union should have spoken to the families of the “abducted” boys before issuing the statements. “We are surprised by the statements of the chief minister and the AAPSU about 39 youths being abducted by us. Had the family members of the youths been contacted before issuing the statements, the truth would have been known.”

Most of the families are said to have kept quiet because they were threatened with dire consequences if they informed the police.

Tikhak said his group began its recruitment campaign in January and continue this month. He claimed that a large number of youths “volunteered to serve the Naga army” over the past month.

“There is no basis in the police theory. Several boys voluntarily came to join us. But since many of them did not fulfil the criteria for recruitment, we expressed our inability to accommodate them in the organisation and asked them to go back home. Most of the boys we had to send back were underage. We do not recruit minors.”

The NSCN (K) is focusing on recruiting youths from Tirap and Changlang districts of Arunachal Pradesh and Sagaing division of Myanmar.

The spokesman insisted that the recruitment campaign was tantamount to violating the ground rules of the ceasefire agreement with Delhi simply because the truce was applicable only to Nagaland.