Meghalaya truck driver killed in Assam, body found in ‘secret chamber’

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaMarch 24, 2024

A truck driver from Meghalaya was murdered and the cement-laden truck was hijacked by a criminal in Assam’s Nagaon district on March 22.

Based on the inputs provided by the truck owner, the police recovered the truck from Pub-Deopani near Kaziranga National Park and arrested the criminal.

The truck driver was identified as Nicholas Dkhar from Jowai town of West Jaintia Hills, police said.

The criminal identified as Raju Nath who hails from Pandu in Guwahati, killed the driver with the help of a wheel wrench inside the truck and then hijacked the truck.

“Raju was planning to take the truck to Jorhat to smuggle off the consignment there,” a senior police official said.

The truck bearing registration number NL01-AA6213 was carrying cement from Meghalaya and was supposed to unload the consignment at Suraksha Cement (KD Cement) at Samuguri in Nagaon district on the morning of March 22.

“But when the truck owner Gurdeep Singh tracked the truck in GPS and saw that it crossed the delivery point, he immediately informed us. We chased it and intercepted it at Deopani before Bagori,” the official said.

“The truck was taken to the police station and Raju was arrested after the truck owner confirmed that he is not the original driver. During the search, the body of the driver was inside the secret chamber of the truck. The body has been sent for postmortem,” he also said.

“Raju Nath is a known criminal. He was earlier arrested several times in truck hijacking cases. But it is surprising how he entered the truck. He told us that a person asked him to accompany the truck driver in Shillong and he has been accompanying him from Shillong,” he said.

“We are looking for the person who sent Raju with the track. But his location is yet to be found. His cell number has been switched off since the day of the incident,” he added.