Terrorists killed a Brit of Indian roots

The Central Bureau of Intelligence of India recovered two skeletons believed to be of Pratul Deb, a retired British education department official who was kidnapped last year, and his assistant Sadhan Nath, from the remote forest belt of Boncheera on the Assam-Mizoram border. The search at the site was launched after a confession to this effect by two Chakma terrorist detainees. The Chakma detainees, who had earlier confessed to killing Pratul and his assistant and burying the bodies under a heap of stones in a hilly section of the forest, guided the sleuths to the spot deep inside the jungle. The CBI team found skeletal remains and shoes that ostensibly belonged to Deb. What seemed to dispel the initial doubts about the identity of the skeleton was a pacemaker lodged in the rib cage of one of the skeletons. Deb, a cardiac patient, is believed to have had such a pacemaker installed in his heart. Pratul, an Indian national permanently settled in Britain, was kidnapped allegedly by members of the United Liberation Front of Barak Valley, a Bru (Reang) group, during a visit to his native village of Bhairobi in Hailakandi near the Mizoram border in March 2004.