ONGC staffer released by ULFA: ‘Couldn’t tell night from day… spent agonising hours thinking about my son’s laugh, parents’
Like the countless night shifts he had worked since he joined the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) as a production engineer, the night of April 20 started out no different. But by the end of it, 38-year-old Retul Saikia was led out of his workplace of five years in handcuffs, shoved into a vehicle and driven off into the night by armed militants of the banned United Liberation Front of Asom (Independent) (ULFA-I).
A month later, on Saturday morning, Saikia was released by the militants at Longwa, in Nagaland’s Mon district, near India-Myanmar border, and handed over to a team of Assam Police, Nagaland Police and the Assam Rifles.
“I can only be grateful,” Saikia told The Indian Express from his home in Borholla, Jorhat, adding: “I never thought I would see them but I am finally back with my family…my old parents, my little son.”
