Colleagues continue sit-in to free engineer

File picture of meira paibis at a sit-in against the abduction of Manipur public health engineering department executive engineer Laishram Dhaballo in Imphal Imphal, Dec. 8: Functioning of the Manipur public health engineering department was affected for the second consecutive day today as the employees continued their sit-in demanding release of the their colleague abducted by a militant group a few days back. Laishram Dhaballo, an executive engineer of the department, was abducted on Saturday and the next day a militant group claimed responsibility over phone through a department official. The outfit is yet to disclose its motive to the department or the family of the hostage. The employees’ coordination committee, however, believes that the abduction has something to do with the department. Even if the officials of the department know the reason for the abduction they are not disclosing it to the media. Demanding the release of their colleague, the employees of the department suspended work and launched a sit-in at the gate of the head office at Khoyathong of Imphal city. The secretary of the coordination committee, N. Nanao reiterated the demand for the safe release of the hostage. He said the sit-in would continue until Dhaballo was released. Dhaballo’s family has also been mounting pressure on the department to secure the release of the engineer, an official source said. He added that efforts were on to establish contact with the abductors. Suspected militants also exploded a hand grenade last evening at the residence of Sanasam Lokendro Singh at Thongju in Imphal East. Singh is an assistant engineer of the same department. Police said no one was injured in the explosion and they could not say which group was responsible for the attack. The police had also recovered an unexploded hand grenade from the gate of the engineer’s residence on December 2. They said it was probably kept there to threaten the engineer. The family members and neighbours of the engineer were planning to stage a sit-in at the village today against the grenade attack, but it was postponed in view of a religious programme at the locality today.