Ex-BSF officer among PLFI men arrested in Odisha

Sambad English Bureau Published On : Oct 2, 2017 at 5:57 PM Updated On : Oct 3, 2017 at 5:11 PM

Rourkela: Police today arrested six more Peoples’ Liberation Front of India (PLFI) operatives including a retired assistant commandant of Border Security Force (BSF), taking the total number of arrests to 13 in two consecutive days.

“We had forwarded seven persons to court in the PLFI case. Today we are forwarding six more. We have arrested the associates of Arjun Rana, the zonal committee member of PLFI. These men were assisting Rana in his extortion activities. Among them a retired military officer Jadumani Patra has been arrested from Barbil,” informed Biramitrapur SDPO Prakash Kumar Patra.

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Police sources said Jadumani Patra, a retired assistant commandant of the Border Security Force (BSF) was arrested by the police early in the morning today from Barbil in Keonjhar district.

Patra was arrested on the basis of information provided by Rana during his interrogation by police, the sources added.

The former BSF assistant commandant, who runs a private security agency in Barbil and provides security services to industrial firms and mining companies used to allegedly provide ballistic training to PLFI cadres, the sources further revealed.

Notably, acting on a tip-off a police team had raided PLFI camp inside Khukundubahal forest of Kuanrmunda block under Birmitrapur police limits on Saturday leading to the arrest of four PLFI operatives, while some others managed to flee.

The arrested were identified as PLFI’s zonal committee member Arjun Rana alias Kapil Pathak (28), area commander for Koida and Barbil Karan Soy alias Surya alias Paulus Munda (22), Jageswar Singh (30) and Sundar Oriya alias Sulli (23).

Police had seized one .9mm carbine machine gun, three 12 bore DBBL (Double Barrel Breech Loading) rifles, two .9mm pistols and about 50 live bullets.

Further interrogation of the arrested PLFI operatives had led to the arrest of Mano Kujur (39) with a DBBL rifle from Bimitrapur police limits, while Manuel Bhengra (39) was arrested from Simdega district in Jharkhand and Rajmohan Kishan (23) from Birmitrapur police station area on Sunday.