New Delhi: The Food Corporation of India chief for the Northeast, PC Ram, may have been killed in an encounter between Assam Police and ULFA at Changsari in Kamrup district, about 35 km from Guwahati, on Wednesday night.
Three people were killed in the encounter, which took place at around 2030 hours. The encounter lasted four-and-a-half hours. Sources told CNN-IBN that one of the three persons killed in the encounter could be Ram.
Ram's family members have been asked to rush to Guwahati to identify the body. In Delhi, the family was trying to arrange for the first possible flight to Guwahati on Thursday morning.
Ram had been kidnapped by suspected ULFA militants in the second week of April and the militant outfit had demanded the release of two of its activists for his release.
Earlier Ram had been declared dead after Assam Police recovered a body and his son had identified it as that of his father. The body was accordingly taken to Ghaziabad and cremated. But last week, Ram's family had surprised everybody by claiming that the senior FCI official was alive and that Ram spoke to his wife on Friday evening.
She claimed that Ram had said the ULFA wanted two of its arrested leaders freed in exchange for his release. Ram's son Prabin too claimed in New Delhi that his father spoke to him.
A DNA test was carried out subsequently in Hyderabad to ascertain the identity of the body brought from Guwahati, police said. The results of the forensic study have not been revealed yet.
This only confirms as CNN-IBN had reported earlier that Ram was not killed earlier, as initially claimed by police presumed so by the family as it cremated a mutilated body in Ghaziabad.
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