Unidentified militants abducted six World Wildlife Fund (WWF) field workers, including three girls, from Laopani under Chirang forest division in Assam’s Kokrajhar district yesterday evening.
Quoting members of an NGO who were let off by the 20-odd abductors, police said the WWF field workers were abducted when they had gone to the area for survey related to a tiger census. The six were hired recently for the work.
A source said the workers were on their way to the Guguni river with some members of Ultapani Biodiversity Conservation Society, a local NGO, when they came across the armed group around 4pm. “The group asked the NGO members to return and took away the WWF workers,” he added.
“Our members had accompanied them as guides. They were near Guguni river when they came across some armed personnel. They first took them to be patrolling security personnel and chatted with them. They even shared some biscuits with the group before being taken away,” a member of the NGO said.
The six abducted workers have been identified as Gautam Kishore Sarma, Pranjal Saikia, Syed Nushad Zaman, Tarali Goswami, Shrabani Goswami and Pallavi Chakrabarty. The team had been in Kokrajhar since January 19 and arrived at Ultapani on January 27. Laopani falls under Ultapani falling in the buffer area of Manas tiger reserve. This is the first time that workers of WWF have been kidnapped from Assam.
Late this evening, sources said contact had been established with the abductors and Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) deputy chief Khampa Borgoyary, who is in-charge of the forest department, was trying to negotiate their release.
Earlier in the day, Kokrajhar additional superintendent of police H. Das said they had received a complaint about the kidnapping from the forest department at 9pm on Sunday and added that a search was under way.
Anupam Sarmah, the coordinator of the North Bank Landscape Program of WWF India, said the organisation was waiting for a call from the abductors. “We are in touch with the families of the kidnapped,” he said.
Sejal Worah, the programme director of WWF India, New Delhi, told The Telegraph that they were in touch with the state government and BTC officials. She added that the nature of the team’s work had left them exposed. “They were simply doing their work,” she said.
Several non-government and conservation organisations working in the Northeast, including WWF-India, Wildlife Trust of India, Aaranyak, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, Dolphin Foundation, EcoSystems-India have also appealed for their immediate release.
“These volunteers are innocent students from our own state. The conservation of wildlife and forests is of utmost importance for our society and they should be released immediately,” said Bibhab Talukdar, the secretary general of Aaranyak.
Two other WWF volunteers — David Smith and Binita Barwati — who were part of the eight-member team engaged in the census work, escaped abduction as they were in another group.
Ram Boojh, a Unesco India official said the kidnapping was a “serious setback to conservation efforts”.
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