The abducted National Highway contractor from Arunachal Pradesh, Taru Tana, was released by his captors early on Tuesday, three days after his abduction.
Suspected NSCN (IM) militants had kidnapped him from his office-cum-residence at Goju village in Bordumsa Subdivision of Changlang district in Arunachal on February 10.
According to Arunachal Police, Tana was freed by his abductors in the Kharsang area in the wee hours on Tuesday, just after midnight.
Police source said, getting information about his release, a police team from Bordumsa Police Station went to the spot and rescued him from Kharsang.
Kharsang is 20 km from Bordumsa.
“Tana, the vice president of M/S Puna & Hunda Construction Company, was found missing from his residence on February 11 morning. The window panes of his room were found broken and blood droplets were found on the floor of his residence. The landlady of the house reportedly heard a scuffle at around 9 30 pm the night before but did not came out to check the cause of the commotion,” a police officer at Bordumsa Police Station said.
It was assumed that Tana was kidnapped at gun-point by NSCN (IM) cadres.
Tana’s company has been carrying out construction activities in Changlang district on a 23-km stretch from Magantong to Mahadevpur under the Trans-Arunachal highway project. Recently there have been serious allegations by locals against the company of doing substandard work in the area.
Sources said that cadres of the NSCN (IM), which is quite active in the area, had served an extortion note of a whooping Rs 1 crore to Tana.
Sources also claimed that Tana had already paid half the amount of the ransom money and was dilly-dallying on the remaining portion. The abduction is seen as a fall-out of that deal.
Bedanta Kumar Sinha, a resident engineer of National Highways & Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited (NHIDCL), was abducted from his rented house at Bordumsa on October 8, 2017 by suspected ULFA (I) militants and after few days, he was released.