Olive green camouflage fatigues procured in an open market with regular tailors stitching uniforms are giving sleepless nights to security forces who are battling repeated attempts being made by miscreants to masquerade as security personnel and indulge in extortion activities in Manipur.
Nearly 15,000 boots of central security forces are on the ground in Manipur besides the Indian army and Assam Rifles. At a time when the central forces -- CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force), BSF (Border Security Force), ITBP (Indo-Tibetan Border Police), and SSB (Sashastra Seema Bal) have deployed nearly 150 companies and the Army and Assam Rifles have nearly 164 columns deployed in the strife-torn state, there is already heavy presence of security personnel in towns and villages that are witnessing clashes over last two months.
The miscreants are taking advantage of the situation to get similar fatigues stitched locally and masquerade as security personnel for carrying out extortion and issue threats both in valley and hill districts, said a senior security official.
“Whenever victims of extortion threats are coming forward and complaints are being filed, we are investigating the matter,’’ said a senior security official. In the past, banned terror outfits have used this ploy to attack people from the tribal community.
The security establishment is now investigating the links of any of these armed assailants with the banned terror groups like the United National Liberation Front (ULNF), People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup (KYKL) or People's Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK) who are sneaking into villages and carrying out violence. What is making matters worse is the repeated attempts being made by mobsters to snatch police weapons in the state.
Recently two attempts were made to snatch five arms from commandos and seven SLRs (Self-Loading Rifle) from other police personnel in Bishnupur district. Both attempts were foiled and the weapons recovered. But this isn’t much relief to the police forces which are still undertaking combing and search operations for more than 3000 weapons that have gone missing from the police armouries and snatched from security forces.
For now, nearly 1,322 weapons have been recovered out of 4,600 missing arms and ammunition in the state. The security forces have been asked to undertake coordinated operations to avoid confusion about the movements of security personnel and carry out more focused combing operations against the armed assailants.
The focus is also on intelligence-based operations to be able to lay hands on the miscreants as a deterrent to such activities. At the same time, a close watch is being kept on suspects who may be assisting the terror groups in procuring the olive green fatigues.
