Aizawl, April 2 : With six hostages abducted by
a separatist outfit in Mizoram untraced for a week, border fencing
along the India-Bangladesh border has been stopped, officials said
Monday.
“The Mizoram Armed Police, BSF (Border
Security Force) and police are continuing their combing operation to
locate the captives,” a Mizoram home department official told reporters
here.
He said the BSF had sought help from Border
Guard Bangladesh (BGB) fearing the Indians may have been taken across
the border by the abductors.
A manager and five
supervisors of a Guwahati-based company were kidnapped by heavily-armed
militants March 26 from their work shed at Bunghmum in Lunglei district
in southwestern Mizoram, 200 km south of Aizawl.
Before the abduction, the militants also looted Rs.2 lakh in cash from
the hostages who were residents of Assam, Punjab and Rajasthan.
Mizoram police suspect the militants are hiding the hostages inside the
mountainous Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) of southeast Bangladesh where
many Indian insurgent groups have hideouts.
No militant group has claimed responsibility for the abduction.
Mizoram has a 404-km border with Myanmar and 318 km border with Bangladesh.
India is erecting a fence and putting flood lights along the 4,095-km
India-Bangladesh border to check militants and crime and to curb
infiltration.