KLO militants behind abduction attempt

Statesman News Service

MALDA, 23 APRIL: Four persons, who tried to kidnap Mr Navin Agarwal, the son of a trader from a village at Raniganj in Gazole police station, here last evening, were KLO militants, said the Malda SP today.

Posing as customers they won the confidence of the victims, Mr Navin Agarwal, who is an automobile trader. They took a ride in his vehicle and then tried to kidnap him at gunpoint yesterday. But their luck ran out and the vehicle turned turtle leaving one of he kidnappers injured. The three others, however, managed to flee.

The injured KLO militant, Gopal Barman alias Maran Singh, is a resident of Khanpur village under Habibpur police station in Malda. According to the police, Barman has confessed they were KLO activists and had arrived from Assam to coerce funds from traders in Malda.

He was trained in a militant camp in Chittagong, Bangladesh in 2005. “The camp he and 42 others were trained in , close to Tripura. They came to Assam after being trained to extort money from local traders. We are trying to find the names of the three militants who managed to escape yesterday”, the SP said.

These four KLO militants were armed with sophisticated foreign pistols of 9 mm caliber. The police seized one pistol from Maran Singh and are trying to trace its manazine, which fell of at the accident site.

The police said that the four KLO militant gathered information from the local Kamtapuri supporters. They were aware that the victim’s father had recently sold a plot of land for major sum.

Acting as would-be customers, the KLO activists proposed Mr Agarwal that they wanted to purchase a tractor from his showroom and summoned him to a spot at Raniganj in Gazole.

The victim agreed to meet them and arrived at the designated spot where the four persons were waiting for him. “When the potential buyers turned out to be kidnappers, the trader’s driver masterminded the accident, which probably saved the situation. Villagers rushed to spot where the vehicle had overturned and intercepted one of the criminals”, said the SP.