Massacre may have a link with the on-going Lok Sabha polls
Guwahati / Shillong: With an escalation in violence in the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous District (BTAD) area of Assam early on Friday, the death toll increased to 11.
The army staged flag marches in the affected areas as Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi instructed the police to deal firmly with the situation.
Early on Friday, a group of about 20 to 25 militants, suspected to be from the NDFB(Songbijit), armed with AK-47 rifles, swooped down on three houses at Balapara-I village in Gossaigaon subdivision in the Kokrajhar district and fired indiscriminately, killing seven persons of the minority community on the spot, including two children and four women, the police said.
Inspector General of Police L R Bishnoi said the body of a three-year-old child, who was also killed in the attack, was found in the area later in the morning.
Two persons were injured in the attack. Police quoting family members of the victims said the militants fired upon one house after another, creating panic in the area.
Earlier on Thursday evening, three persons of a family, including two women, were shot dead and an infant was seriously injured by NDFB (S) militants at Ananda Bazar in the neighbouring Baksa district.
Senior politician of Kokrajhar Urkhao Gwra Brahma said over the phone that people from about half a dozen villages in the affected areas had started fleeing to the Dhubri district.
Brahma, as well as a few political observers in Guwahati and Kokrajhar said the sudden spurt in violence in the BTAD area could have a link with the on-going Lok Sabha polls though Gogoi, in a news conference in Guwahati, discounted such possibility and described the incident as purely an outrage by militants.
An official source said that Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde called up the Chief Minister on Friday morning and assured help and support to the State Government in restoration of normality.
Shinde assured Gogoi that additional companies would be rushed in to reinforce security in the
Violence-hit places in particular and BTC areas in general.
The State Home Department has requested the Union Home Ministry to deploy additional 10 companies of para-military forces in the affected areas of BTAD.
At a law and order review meeting with top civil and police officials at his office chamber, Chief Minister Gogoi asked the police to nab the militants behind the incident.
He termed the incidents as cowardly acts by suspected militants of NDFB(S).
The flag march by the army would instil confidence among the people and help bring the situation under control, he said. “The Government will do everything possible to frustrate the nefarious designs of the insurgents out to create terror and to apprehend them at the earliest.”
Urkhao Gwra Brahma, who is also a candidate in the LS polls from Kokrajhar, had a meeting with the deputy commissioner of Kokrajhar and requested the district administration to bring back the people who had fled to Dhubri. He said this was important for the restoration of peace and communal harmony.
Brahma, who has the support of All Bodo Students Union, said a prominent leader of the ruling Bodoland Peoples Front in BTAD had made a statement a few days ago that the non-tribals had not voted for BPF candidate Chandan Brahma and had instead supported former ULFA leader Hira Sarania, who is contesting as an independent candidate in Kokrajhar supported by Jonogoshthiya Oikya Mancha, an organization of non-tribals.
Brahma did not rule out, however, the possibility of the killings being the result of a factional rivalry between the undergrounds.
He said a splinter group of the NDFB(S) could have engineered the incidents so that the government could take the opportunity to start a flushout of NDFB(S) militants from the area.
Earlier in the week, three militants of NDFB(S) were killed in an encounter with the police in the Sonitpur district, but a source in Kokrajhar said it was unlikely that the attacks in Kokrajhar and Baksa were in retaliation to the encounter as Sonitpur was far away from Guwahati.
Arguing that there was conspiracy behind the killings, a political observer in Kokrajhar said the Lok Sabha polls were still due in a number of constituencies in the country and at this stage a polarization in minority votes could help some political parties.
A Guwahati-based observer said, however, that the killing could be linked to the voting pattern in Kokrajhar constituency as victory of a candidate backed by non-tribals could weaken the cause of the Bodoland movement.
