Summary:
Imphal, Nov 16 (PTI) A massive manhunt mounted on Sunday in the jungles of Churachandpur in Manipur near the border with Myanmar to search for militants responsible for a deadly ambush which killed personnel and family members of the para-military Assam Rifles continued Tuesday.
Officials said that the combing operation conducted jointly by Assam Rifles and state police was on in the jungles even as border patrolling was beefed up to ensure the militants who killed Assam Rifles Colonel Viplav Tripathi, his wife and son besides four other riflemen on Saturday using explosive mines and automatic fire, did not slip out to Myanmar where they are suspected to have bases.
Two shadowy militant groups - People"s Liberation Army and the Manipur Naga People"s Front - which had been dormant for long had on Saturday jointly claimed responsibility for the attack.
Sanjiv Krishnan Sood, former additional director general of BSF with long years of experience in tackling insurgency in the North East told PTI "it is surprising that these two outfits collaborated with each other and suddenly came alive again ...
one has to see whether there is a common factor which I suspect could be China behind this." In separate dragnet operations two militants belonging to different proscribed outfits were arrested from urban areas in Manipur"s Thoubal and Imphal East districts on Sunday.
Acting on tip-offs, Assam Rifles personnel along with Manipur Police nabbed a People"s Liberation Army (PLA) militant in Thoubal and a Kangleipak Communist Party (KCP) insurgent in Imphal East district on Sunday.