Tura, Feb 9: East Garo Hills police have discovered a hidden cache of highly powerful bullets meant for use in a sniper rifle that was kept buried inside the soil in a forest not far from Williamnagar.
Police Superintendent of East Garo Hills, Bruno A Sangma told Hub News that a specific input was received from their sources about the illegal consignment.
“Today we received specific inputs about buried arms and ammunition at Dorengkigre jungles and a special operation team was sent for searching the suspected area at 9:30 AM,” said SP Sangma.
After a thorough search, the teams were able to find the weapons buried underground in the Dorengkigre jungle, 20 kms from Williamnagar.
The search teams recovered 219 rounds of 7.7 mm sniper ammunition believed to be used in the Russian-made Dragunov sniper rifle which the GNLA previously had in their possession.
The teams also found 53 numbers of walkie talkie earphones and one demand note of the GNLA from the hiding point.
According to police, the area of Dorengkigre forests form part of Durama hills that are vastly uninhabited and covered with dense forests. The area was once a den for GNLA which carried out frequent attacks on security forces. The militants would cross the Simsang river to commit crime and flee to the safety of their forests, many a time. A full police onslaught in 2017 and early 2018 led to the ultimate flushing out of the militants from the area, dismantling of their camps, and the subsequent killing of its chief Sohan D Shira.
Police say that there are many more jungle hideouts that still contain weapons, ammunition, and even cash left behind by the GNLA.
