Arrested Garo National Liberation Council founder (GNLA) chairman Champion R Sangma, remains an enigma to many. He was comfortably placed as a Meghalaya Police Service (MPS) officer, but deserted the force and floated the militant outfit. Oh! Meghalaya Editor Tilak Rai traces the militant leader’s journey from the police barrack to the dense jungle of Garo Hills.
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t is an irony that the policemen who once “saluted him” are today guarding their most “prized catch.” Like in the masala Bollywood movie, life for the Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA) Champion R Sangma has turned a full circle. However, reality can be bitter as the renegade police officer turned militant leader may now have realized that he may not exactly be “treated like the Bollywood heroes.”
The East Khasi hills police are not exactly treating him like an actor, but are ensuring that he is so well guarded that his GNLA cadres are not able to even come sniffing distance of their arrested leader. The police have ensured that there are no sympathizer(s) within the police who are heavily guarding him.
Top police officers had chosen “trusted policemen” drawn from different police stations to guard him. A high ranking policeman officer said, “ Khasi and non-tribal policemen are guarding the militant leader as the police doesn’t want to take remotest of risk.” Sangma has been lodge in a high security prison immediately after he was arrested from Umkrem in Pyrdiwa village bordering Bangladesh.
A 2004 batch MPS officer, Champion R Sangma simply disappeared and surfaced as the chairman of GNLA. At a time of disappearing, Sangma was posted as an Assistant Commandant of the 2nd MLP Battalion at Goeragre in Garo hills.
Though many of his batch mates who had undergone training together in the North Eastern Police Academy (NEPA) were taken aback after they learnt that Champion had floated a militant outfit, but a top police officer said: “It does not appear that he had floated the militant outfit suddenly, he had planned it before and when he was ready he deserted the police.”
Some of his batch mates who underwent training together at NEPA said that though Champion never showed a militant streak, but he never gave the impression of making a good police officer. An officer said: “During training he had problems, as per records he remained absent from training and was a habitual drinker.”
An MA in Philosophy from North Eastern Hills University (NEHU) Tura campus, Champion R Sangma transformation from a police officer to a militant leader has remained a mystery.
Under him the GNLA unleashed a reign of terror and made Garo hills a happy hunting ground of the outfit. It now remains to be seen whether his arrest will have any impact of the GNLA as his commander-in-chief Sohan D Shira is still at large.
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