Guwahati: The NSCN(K) has threatened to drive out all non-Nagas from Nagaland if the National Investigation Agency (NIA), that is probing terror funding cases, continues to target family members of its members.
The anti-talk faction of NSCN(K), in a hard-hitting statement on Tuesday, said the NSCN(K) had been maintaining the maximum restraint despite the endless provocations by the NIA. “It may force the outfit to retaliate by committing terrorist activities,” said its political wing in a statement to the local media in Kohima.
The NIA had recently seized nearly Rs 28 lakhs in cash from the home of Shelly Sumi, wife of self-styled “Lt Gen” Nikki Sumi of NSCN(K). The NIA also found evidence that four Nagaland government officers had made the banned insurgent group richer by over Rs 20 crores in just four years by sharing with it funds from the state exchequer.
To what the outfit has described as its retaliatory step, the NSCN(K) threatened to target traders, business people or government officials, accusing them of being collaborators and sympathisers of NIA, who it said “must be evicted from Nagaland”.
It also alleged that the Government of India has empowered the NIA “with unparalleled extra-constitutional and extra-judicial terrorising powers to harass, arrest, torture and imprison Nagas far beyond the legal limits”.
Before the arrest of the top NSCN(K) leader’s wife, the NIA had arrested four officers — Vilepral Aja (additional director, department of agriculture, Kohima), Purakhu Angami (former director of the department of tourism), Kekhriesatuo Tep (superintendent of fisheries department) and K. Hutoi Sema (executive engineer, irrigation and flood control department) on October 13.
“These officers maintained slips and registers in which the exact amount and name of the person to whom the money was to be given are mentioned. The handwriting experts of the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, Gandhinagar, have confirmed that these four officers maintained these registers,” security sources said, indicating more arrests by the NIA were likely soon.
