After 31 days, ULFA-I on Saturday released ONGC’s third technical staff Ritul Saikia in Nagaland, Assam Police officials confirmed and said he is likely to reach home in eastern Assam’s Jorhat by Saturday evening.
An Assam police official said in Guwahati that Saikia reached Longwa in Nagaland’s Mon district near the India-Myanmar border early on Saturday morning.
“Saikia would be handed over to the Assam police officials by the Assam Rifles. He would also be tested for Covid-19. Immediately after his release, Saikia talked to his aged mother over phone,” the official said.
The United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent (ULFA-I) led by self-styled ‘commander-in-chief’ Paresh Baruah had, on April 21, kidnapped three technical persons of the state owned Oil and Natural Gas Corporation from a drilling site at Lakwa in eastern Assam’s Sibsagar district.
The Army, along with Assam Rifles troopers, rescued two hostages — Mohini Mohan Gogoi, 35, and Alakesh Saikia, 28, — from the militants’ custody following a fierce gun battle on April 23 night, but Ritul Saikia, 33, was remained in the captivity of the banned outfit.
Gogoi and Ritul Saikia are junior technicians, production, while Alakesh Saikia is a junior engineering assistant, production. Gogoi is a resident of Dibrugarh district and other two employees are inhabitants of Jorhat district.
The outlawed outfit ULFA-I on May 15 announced a unilateral ceasefire for three months with immediate effect. ULFA-I, in a statement, had said that in view of the Covid-19 pandemic, the outfit has “unilaterally suspended all kinds of military operations in Assam for three months from May 15”. The statement, in Assamese language, also alleged that the security forces had hatched a clandestine plan to malign the ULFA-I.
After 2006, this is the second time the banned outfit has announced a unilateral ceasefire in the state.
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, after taking oath as 15th Chief Minister of Assam on May 10, urged the ULFA-I supremo Paresh Baruah, and other militant groups to shun the path of violence and join the mainstream.
The anti-talk outlawed ULFA-I had recently released radio operator Ram Kumar, a resident of Bihar, and drilling superintendent Pranab Kumar Gogoi of Sivasagar district, after more than 100 days after the two employees of Delhi-based private oil and gas exploration company Quippo Oil and Gas Infrastructure Ltd were abducted from Arunachal Pradesh on December 21 last year.
