Tura, Aug. 13: Less than a week after militants shot dead a man accusing him to be a police informer, armed Garo National Liberation Army rebels killed another person for the same reason in Rongcheck Akong village in the East Garo Hills last night.
Militants reached the village, 116km from Tura, called out the victim identified as Hawart G. Momin, and after calling him a police informer, shot him dead and fled the scene. The incident comes close to a similar execution carried out on August 9 by GNLA militants who shot dead 50-year-old Simon Ch. Marak at Koksi Nengsak village in the same district on a similar accusation.
The GNLA, which has faced several reverses in recent months, is targeting civilians in vulnerable areas whom they suspect of collaborating with police. Several people have lost their lives recently at the hands of militants who killed them on the suspicion of being a spy for the government.
While the militants are targeting civilians, elsewhere in Garo hills, mobs are meting out street justice on suspected extortionists and criminals. Incidents of the people taking law into their own hands and delivering quick verdicts in kangaroo courts have increased in Garo hills in the past six months. Nearly a dozen people have died in such attacks.
In a recent case, residents of border village Sesengpara in the West Garo Hills, 52km from here, thrashed two people to death for attempted robbery after the village defence party caught them around 2am. In another incident, two suspected ANVC (B) militants were killed by a mob at Dorengtip village in Goalpara district of Assam bordering Garo hills on August 9.
Cough syrup seized
Thirteen cartons of cough syrup were seized in the plains belt of Phulbari in the West Garo Hills last night.
Police personnel intercepted a tempo near Gomaijora village in Phulbari, 84km from Tura, and found 1,559 bottles of Kodex cough syrup, earlier known as Corex, being transported to Mancachar town in Assam.
The consignment, valued at Rs 65,800 in the market, was being transported from Assam’s border town of Hatsinghimari through Phulbari. The police have arrested a pharmacist who was taking the consignment while a medical representative from Phulbari, who arranged the transaction, fled.
