Rebels who parked bomb-laden car at Manipur Raj Bhavan arrested

Three separatist rebels, including a woman, of the outlawed Manipur based Kangleipak Communist Party (KCP), who parked a bomb-packed car at the Raj Bhavan in Imphal, were arrested Friday from a house on the outskirts of Assam's main city of Guwahati, officials said.

A police spokesperson said the arrested KCP rebels were directly involved in two specific incidents - parking a car packed with explosives at the Raj Bhavan in Imphal Sept 18 and then lobbing a grenade at the Manipur chief minister's official residence last year.

The arrested are A. Mema Devi, KCP's finance and organising secretary, and two other militants - Y. Nanou Singh and L. Jitendra Singh.

"The three were staying at a rented accommodation on a hillside near Mirza and were trying to set up a mobile base camp in the area. On specific intelligence, we managed to arrest the three of them," a senior police official said.

The KCP is an influential group fighting for an independent homeland for the majority Metei community in Manipur, a state of 2.4 million people bordering Myanmar.

"Interrogations are on to find out if the KCP had some local links and what was the motive behind staying near Guwahati," the official said.

The official said during interrogation the trio confessed parking a Maruti car Sept 18 inside the Raj Bhawan.

The car was packed with moulded gelatin sticks fitted to a mobile telephone handset and cleverly concealed in the back seat.

The car bomb was detected and safely detonated later.

In October 2008, the arrested KCP militants lobbed a grenade at the official residence of Manipur chief minister. No one was injured in the attack but a portion of the wall was damaged.

Last updated on Nov 27^th, 2009 at 17:54 pm IST--IANS