East

Army commandos daring hostage rescue in Assam jungles

Sandeep Unnithan  New Delhi, October 9, 2010 | UPDATED 19:42 IST

 

A muffled thump of a silenced Micro-Uzi, bursts of AK-47 fire and a frantic jungle firefight. As Delhi warmed up to the spectacular opening ceremony of the Commonwealth games in New Delhi, the army's special forces raced through the jungles of Assam to perform a daring textbook rescue killing four cadres of the banned militant group the National Democratic Front of Bodoland and freeing a businessman they were holding hostage.

Location of the encounter between the army's special forces and militants of National Democratic Front of BodolandRescue missions are delicate surgeries meant to be carried out with scalpel-like precision to ensure that no harm comes to the hostages. This is usually far from the case as these missions end up as messy Pyrrhic victories with the hostages trapped between the good and the bad.
The story of this rare jungle rescue began on September 24 when the militants kidnapped Katan Nandi (36) son of a local grocery and retail store owner Parikshit Nandi in Dimu, Dhemaji district. They threatened to kill him unless a Rs.50 lakh ransom was paid up. Both the ULFA and the NDFB have accelerated kidnappings to generate funds for the groups with ransoms ranging from Rs.50 lakh to Rs.1 crore.
The Assam police dialed an Indian army's jungle warfare trained army Para-SF unit located nearby. On September 29, the unit began its task of locating the hostage. The unit was tipped off about the presence of the militants and began the grueling five-day task of collecting local intelligence.
Based on a local farmer's inputs that he had heard voices in the forest, they moved in to a search area of one kilometer by one kilometer. The wait paid off around noon on October 3. After a six-hour surveillance using spotter scopes, a group of four commandos located two suspicious individuals near the jungles north-west of Dhimaji district of Assam close to the Arunachal Pradesh border.
Weapons that were captured after the forest encounterThe commandos began stalking their quarry. The duo walked to a forest clearing where there were ten other militants. The hostage was bound and put at the foot of a tree while some of the militants sat playing cards, cooking food and waiting for their ransom to arrive.
It was noon but the thick and impenetrable forest cover made it seem like dusk. As the commandos crawled through the dense undergrowth, they were hit by stones and abuses in Assamese. The militants mistook them for foraging animals.
A few metres away, one of the crawling commandos ran into a startled sentry. Before he could reach for his weapon, the commando had whipped out his silenced Micro-Uzi and shot him in the head. The thump of the Uzi traveled across the jungle.
The firefight had begun. The militants began sheltering behind trees and blasting away with their AK-47s. The commandos were outnumbered. They could not use their force-multipliers, an 84mm Carl Gustav rocket launcher and 'Pika' machine gun, for fear of killing the hostage who was left under the tree. One of the commandos shouted out in Assamese asking the hostage not to run, he then darted forward and grabbed him by his legs and dragged him to safety.
The militants began pouring fire in his direction. One of the commandos carefully aimed and brought down two militants. A second commando shot one more militant and the rest fled into the undergrowth.
The end of a successful hostage rescue mission. The commandos then trekked for 24 hours through the jungle to reach the nearest road where a warm reception awaited them.

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