SUSPECTED armed rebels in India’s troubled northeast region have released three of six abducted conservationists from the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), police said, as a search intensified to find their missing colleagues.
The Indian WWF volunteers were conducting a census of tigers and elephants on the outskirts of the protected forests of Manas National Park in Assam when they were taken at gunpoint by a group of around 20 men on Sunday (February 6), senior police officer PK Dutta said.
He said police suspected the three men and three women had been kidnapped by a separatist rebel group active in the remote region. No insurgent group has claimed responsibility and the motive remains unclear.
“The three women were released this evening and were found near the border with Bhutan by local villagers,” Dutta told AlertNet by phone from Kokrajhar town, some 20 km (12 miles) from where they went missing.
“We are making arrangements to bring them to the nearest town,” he said, adding that the women were in a good condition and would hopefully be able to reveal who their captors were and what the motive for the abduction was.
More than 100 army and paramilitary soldiers and police have fanned out across the dense forests in the remote area in search of the conservationists.
A faction of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, which is fighting for a separate state for Assam’s Bodo tribes people, has a presence in the area.
The group was blamed for a series of explosions in 2008 that killed over 100 people and wounded hundreds more. The rebels often target local villagers and forestry officials, accusing them of providing information to security forces.
While separatist guerrilla groups have in the past targeted businessmen in exchange for a ransom, conservationists and aid workers have not been attacked or abducted.
