Alipurduar, Jan. 12: Police claimed to have come a step closer to netting the on-the-run chief of the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) with the arrest of Meghnath Roy, a key linkman of the militant outfit, last night.
Roy, 28, was arrested from his home at Shidhabari in Shalkumarhat around 10.30 pm. Shalkumarhat is considered a safe zone for the militants and their associates as it is flanked by the Jaldapara Wild Life Sanctuary and the Torsha river.
Roy used to shelter the KLO brass, including commander-in-chief Jeevan Singha, who is believed to have fled to Bangladesh.
Roy’s name repeatedly came up during the interrogation of Tom Adhikary and Milton Burma, two KLO top guns arrested by the Royal Bhutan Army last month.
Jalpaiguri police stumbled onto Roy’s trail after the Bhutan authorities handed over 20 rocket propelled grenades that they had recovered from the Bucca camp of the KLO. After questioning the militants in custody, the police learnt that Roy had routed the arms to Bhutan.
Chief of the Jalpaiguri force Siddh Nath Gupta said: “We had once arrested Meghnath in 2001 for his involvement in anti-national activities. He was released after 11 months on condition that he would return to the mainstream and help the police by providing information on the militants’ movement in Shalkumarhat. But instead he went back to helping the KLO again.”
Gupta said Roy was “more dangerous” than some of the trained rebels as he knew the terrain like the back of his hand. He found shelters for the militants and helped them choose the routes to Bhutan. “Meghnath was a reliable linkman and extremely efficient. Otherwise, the KLO would not have given him charge of routing 20 rocket-propelled grenades to its Bhutan camp. Had he helped us in the past, militants like Rustam Chowdhury of the Ulfa, who died in an encounter last June, Singha, Adhikary and Burma would have been in our net much earlier,” the police superintendent said.
Roy said he was first approached by Sukumar Roy, the KLO cultural secretary, who asked him to help the outfit conduct meetings in the area and provide its members with safe houses.
High court judges
President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam today appointed Soumitra Pal, Aniruddha Bose, Arun Kumar Bhattacharya, Sankar Prasad Mitra and Pranab Kumar as judges of Calcutta High Court, says a PTI report.
