ONGC India’s 3 employees are kidnapped from eastern oil rig of Assam
According to a Reuters report, ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corp) announced that three of its employees were kidnapped by gunmen from a rig site in the Assam state of India.
The company has filed a complaint with local officials and said that the employees were kidnapped in a company-owned vehicle from the state-run firm’s Lakwa field in Assam’s Sivasagar district. ONGC said in a tweet that the vehicle was found abandoned near the Nimonagarh jungles close to the Assam-Nagaland border.
The Local police said they suspected the United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent (ULFA-I), an armed separatist group in the region, to have carried out the abduction. “Based on the region and the way this incident happened, we suspect the ULFA-I could have carried out the abduction,” Amitava Sinha, the top police officer in the district told to media.
According to local media reports, earlier also, two employees of Quippo Oil and Gas Infrastructure Ltd were kidnapped in December in Arunachal Pradesh. Two ONGC engineers were infamously shot dead in Assam by ULFA-I in the early 90s, and an engineer from Oil India Ltd (OILI.NS), another state-run firm, was abducted in 2006.
Higher officials of the State Police are looking into the complaint, ONGC said, we are in constant touch with the higher authorities of the Assam state.
