Attack on Assam Rifles: Myanmar border will be sealed on priority, says Manipur CM Biren Singh

GUWAHATI: A day after the militants came from Myanmar and carried out the deadly ambush on an Assam Rifles convoy in Manipur’s Churachandpur district, the state's Chief Minister N Biren Singh on Sunday said the government would expedite fencing the porous international border.

“We share a 398 km border with Myanmar. Given the sensitivity, the Home Ministry has already started the fencing work in vulnerable areas. It will be the priority of the state government and the Centre to fence the porous border to avoid such incidents,” Singh told journalists after visiting six injured personnel at a hospital in state capital Imphal.

He said the border fencing work was going on at a stretch of 40 km and the work was stopped at some places due to disputes.

Singh condemned the attack and said he had passed instructions to the state’s Home Department and the paramilitary forces to nab the perpetrators of the crime.

Sounding a warning to the militants, he said the state government would not compromise on such a terrorist act.

Colonel Viplav Tripathi, who was the commanding officer of 46 Assam Rifles, his wife, their six-year-old son and four personnel were killed in the ambush carried out jointly by the People’s Liberation Army and the lesser-known Manipur Naga People’s Front.

The incident took place at Thinghat, around 20 km from the Myanmar border, when the victims were returning after visiting a forward camp in the Singhat sub-division of Churachandpur.

Col Tripathi hailed from Chhattisgarh. The four other slain personnel were from Assam, Nagaland, West Bengal and Rajasthan. The mortal remains of the martyrs will remain in Jorhat, Assam on Sunday night and will be flown to their respective homes on Monday.

The security forces launched a massive manhunt for the insurgents responsible for the attack. A senior army official did not rule out a cross-border operation by the security forces. “That’s an option,” he told this newspaper.

In June 2015, Indian para commandos had conducted a cross-border operation against insurgents belonging to the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN-K) and killed over a dozen of them. Just days before the operation, the NSCN-K had killed 18 Army personnel in an ambush in Chandel district of Manipur.