DIPHU, May 14 � In a severe blow to the Karbi Peoples Liberation Tiger (KPLT), personnel of the Indian Army and Assam Police from Manja Police Station, gunned down six members of the organisation, including its commander-in-chief, in a fierce gunbattle, which broke out around 6 am today at Langtibuk, located in the high altitude of the Singhason hill range about 90 kilometres from here.
According to information received here, the casualty figure may go up. No information of injury among the security personnel has been received so far.
Self-styled commander-in-chief of the outfit Bikash Teron alias Kangthur, was among those killed.
It may be mentioned here that the KPLT is a splinter faction of the Karbi Longri NC Hills Liberation Front (KLNLF), which had shunned violence and come overground a few years back. Even though the KLNLF had deposited a huge cache of arms at the time of the surrender, the splinter faction got away with a considerable quantity of varied weapons to raise the new outfit.
Despite suffering several major blows from the security forces engaged in counter-insurgency operations, the KPLT has kept up its activities.
In recent times the outfit has unleashed a massive extortion and abduction drive in several parts of the district, which has become a cause of concern for the security forces. The outfit also disrupted the process of election campaigning in the hill districts of Assam in the recently concluded Lok Sabha polls by resorting to a general strike for an indefinite period. The strike was withdrawn only on the day of polling, that is, on April 12.
