The Northeast Frontier Railway (NFR) today cancelled trains in the militant-infested Haflong-Badarpur hill section following today's attack, a Railway source informed. One CRPF man was killed and 17 others were injured in another attack on a passenger train along the same route yesterday.
According to a police source, suspected militants belonging to the Black Widow or the Dima Halam Daogah (Jewel Garlosa) outfit opened fire at good train traveling from Lumding to Silchar between Langtin and Dijaobra stations this morning killing two persons and seriously injuring a guard.
The killed persons were identified as Lalit Buragohain and Bisweswar Bora, both Special Police Officers (SPOs) attached to a private construction firm. The SPOs were travelling on the train from Lumding where they had gone for marketing. An Assam Police Battalion (APBN) jawan Upen Kalita who was guarding the goods train, was seriously injured in the attack.
The SPOs are former army or police personnel who have been appointed on contract by Assam police to guard workers and officials of private construction companies engaged in railway gauge conversion project and the East West Corridor project in the insurgency hit North Cachar Hill district.
In the hazardous Lumding –Badarpur hill section of the NFR where passenger train services are very few, local people are used to travel in goods trains as there is hardly any other mode of communication in that remote part of the state.