After getting a tip-off from an anonymous letter, the Meghalaya police on Monday recovered three INSAS rifles, snatched from a police station by masked men on August 15 during protests against the encounter killing of a former militant leader, from a river, an official said. Unidentified masked men barged into a police outpost in the outskirts of Shillong in the afternoon of Independence day, snatched three INSAS rifles, hijacked a police SUV and drove it through Mawlai area before burning it down. A search was conducted at Umkhrah river as per information provided in an anonymous letter saying where the guns were thrown into the river, the official said.
He said the search was conducted at the exact location and the guns were found. The letter, addressed to the Mawlai locality chief, had claimed that the guns were thrown down the river on the same day they were snatched. Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma had urged the persons responsible for snatching the guns to return them. Three police personnel from whom the arms were snatched on Independence Day have been suspended and a departmental inquiry is on in this regard. Violence broke out in parts of Shillong on August 15 during the funeral of former militant leader Cheristerfield Thangkhiew, who was shot dead by the police in an encounter two days earlier.
Thangkhiew, the former self-styled general secretary of the outlawed Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC), was killed when the police raided his home in Shillong's Mawlai area in connection with the recent IED blasts across the state. The Meghalaya government has instituted a judicial inquiry to be conducted by Justice (retd) T Vaiphei, the chairperson of the Meghalaya Human Rights Commission, into the incident. He has been asked to submit his report in three months.
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