Diphu: Underground outfit United People`s
Democratic Solidarity (UPDS) cadres bid farewell to arms on Wednesday
with 568 of them, including 22 women, surrendering with a huge
amount of arms and ammunition here.
Led by UPDS general secretary Haren Sing (Sing) Bey in
the presence of the outfit`s chairman L S Siner, the
insurgents laid down arms before Assam Director General of
Police Sankar Barua at the Karbi Anglong Sports` Association
(KASA) stadium.
The huge cache of arms and ammunition deposited
included 177 rifles, including 85 AK series rifles, five M-16
rifles, eight 303 rifles, two US carbines, three self-loading
rifles (SLRs), five starling carbines, one universal machine
guns (UMG), 18 9-mm pistols and a rocket launcher.
There were 322 magazines, 18740 rounds ammunitions of
1173 rounds of AK series rifles bullets, 631 bullets, four G3
mortars, one G4 mortar, official sources said.
The surrender was part of the Memorandum of Settlement
(MoS) of the tripartite peace accord signed by the Karbi
ethnic militant outfit, the Centre and Assam government in
Delhi on November 5.
Since entering into a ceasefire agreement with the
Centre in May 2002, the outfit had held six rounds of talks
with the state and the Centre till 2006.
UPDS was formed in March 1999 with the merger of two
terrorist outfits in Assam`s Karbi Anglong district - Karbi
National Volunteers (KNV) and Karbi People?s Front (KPF).
Its ceasefire agreement with the Centre, however, led
to a split in UPDS with one faction continuing with its
militant activities and rechristening itself as Karbi Longri
North Cachar Hills Liberation Front and its armed wing as
Karbi Longri North Cachar Hills Resistance Force in May 2004.
PTI
