Seven CRPF personnel were killed by the guerrillas of a tribal militia in the North Cacher Hills district of Assam on Friday.

The rebels also snatched the weapons of all the slain security-men. Additional police and paramilitary forces reached the scene after the incident and launched a combing operation to nab the militants.

The district’s Superintendent of Police (SP) B B Chhetry said that the militants had apparently targetted the commandant of the 50th battalion of the CRPF.

He himself escaped unhurt, but the bodies of seven other paramilitary personnel were riddled with bullets.
CRPF commandant P K Chhetry was travelling from the paramilitary force’s battalion headquarters in Haflong to remote Daiyang Mukh in a three-vehicle-convoy.

“The convoy was ambushed by the militants between Dihangi and Thaijuari. While the first two vehicles escaped with none of the security men being hurt, the last one bore the brunt,” said the SP.

All the occupants of the last vehicle were killed.

Radicals’ handiwork
Though no militant organization has claimed responsibility for the attack, top police officers suspect that it was the handiwork of a breakaway faction of the Dima Halam Daogah (DHD). The DHD has since long been pursuing an armed rebellion with the professed objective of creating a separate autonomous homeland for the Dimasas, the majority tribe of the NC Hills with a spillover population in neighbouring Karbi Anglong district.
The Dima Halam Daogah entered into a peace-process with the Union Government a few years back and signed a truce deal.

Black Window
But the outfit’s radicals led by a much-wanted guerrilla leader Jewel Garlossa broke away to float a new outfit, which is now known as ‘Black Widow’.

“It seems that the militants of the Black Widow faction carried out the attack on the CRPF personnel,” said the Superintendent of Police .

Kidnapped
The outfit’s militants also kidnapped the son of a contractor from neighbouring Cacher in Barak Valley late at night on Thursday. The contractor was awarded some of the major road projects in Barak Valley.

The militants had earlier abducted three of his employees. While two of the hostages had been killed after their employer had refused to pay the huge ransom demanded by the kidnappers, another had managed to escape just when they had been lined up for being shot, sources said.