Four militants arrested in Assam

GUWAHATI - Four militants of the outlawed Kamatapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) were arrested from a safe house Saturday in Assam’s main city of Guwahati in a joint raid by police and paramilitary troopers.

A police spokesperson said the four KLO rebels were arrested from a rented accommodation in the heart of Guwahati.

“Based on specific inputs that some KLO militants were hiding in a city base, we raided the house and captured four of them,” a senior police official said.

The rebels were in the city for the past 45 days and were planning strategies to stage violent strikes in Guwahati, police said.

“They were on a definite mission to plan some attacks in Guwahati. We are investigating if they were in touch with other militant groups for a joint operation in the city,” the police official said.

The KLO had definite links with the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) and the two had together launched several attacks in areas bordering West Bengal in the past.

The KLO is a rebel group fighting to carve out a separate Kamtapur state comprising six districts of Cooch Behar, Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri, North and South Dinajpur and Malda in West Bengal and four contiguous districts of Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon, Dhubri and Goalpara in Assam.