The Imphal Free Press

IMPHAL, Nov 19: The underground UNLF in a press release today charged that most of the people the Assam Rifles claims to have killed in encounters are either innocent civilians, revolutionary deserters who have taken shelter in their camps or else retired revolutionaries.

The modus operandi has been for the Assam Rifles to pick up these people from Imphal and bring to the border area of Moreh and then eliminate them in stages encounters.

In other cases, those thus eliminated are deserters from the UG camps who the Assam Rifles have used in their game to the fullest while in their custody and after their utility have exhausted, are disposed of in ingenious way by eliminating them in fake encounter and gain propaganda mileage by claiming success in counter insurgency operations, the release charged.

It even claimed that the Assam Rifles keeps a reserve of these captives to be killed as and when their propaganda campaigns demand it.

It said the claim by the Assam Rifles PRO on November 14 that the 31 Assam Rifles killed two people near Border Pillar No 81 on the Indo-Myanmar border, are unknown to the UNLF. It said on the particular day, there are no record whatsoever of the UNLF having engaged anybody in an encounter.

The two probably are people from among the reserve of people the Assam Rifles keeps to be killed at their convenience and to their propaganda advantage, it said.

The Assam Rifles probably know the identities of the two whose bodies are now said to be in the RIMS mortuary unclaimed but are pretending ignorance so as to make their crime look like an encounter, it added.

It said there are numerous ordinary Moreh traders the Assam Rifles dragged down from the passenger vehicles they were traveling and then later eliminated in what they claimed to be encounters. Despite the accounts of eyewitnesses, the blatant lie of the Assam Rifles continues that they were killed in encounters.

There have also been cases when witnesses testified Assam Rifles victims were picked up from their homes in Imphal and other places, and then later found killed in staged encounters in the Moreh border area, it said.

 

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