There was much sound and fury when November 22 happened and five able-bodied men from Mukroh village were shot at by Assam Police on the Meghalaya side of the border. VIPs rushed to the place of the incident more for photo-ops than anything else. The Cherry Blossom Festival that had drawn a huge traffic of tourists was called off leading to unscheduled travel plans for many. Now, anyone will think twice about attending any programme in Meghalaya, not least a literature event which is erroneously termed a festival when it is all about discussing issues and books and writers. The idea of blindly copying the phrase “LitFest (Literature Festival) shows a lack of originality. Its as if the word LitFest alone would be a crowd puller. Anyway, the much- hyped Autumn Festival is amongst the jinxed list.
After having brought the state to a halt it would be fair to expect that the pressure groups would continue their demand for the arrest of the trigger-happy Assam policemen and for an independent probe that would be supervised by the Meghalaya High Court since the killings happened within the state boundaries of Meghalaya. But as of now, no one knows what is happening on this case. Without public pressure this case too will be forgotten even as the election drums are beginning to sound loud and furious. This is not the first time that killings have happened at the border and that people have been outraged. Ironically such outrage is short-lived. People move on with their priorities and those who suffer and have their hopes kindled by the presence of so many ostensibly empathetic visitors, now feel abandoned. No one knows whether these families that have lost their loved ones will ever get justice. Merely paying a one-time compensation cannot wipe away the silent tears of loneliness and the bleak future that the survivors have to face.
Assam continues to behave like the proverbial big brother in all such border conflicts and there is no remorse whatsoever at the inhuman crimes committed on November 22 by the police of that state. In the case of Mizoram, though the Assam Police dare not carry out such misadventures even though the Mizos have in recent times, reportedly turned the areas under conflict with Assam as huge garbage dumps, notwithstanding the fact that the area is treated as sacrosanct since five Assam Police personnel had lost their lives at the very spot. These different posturing for different states has to end. Perhaps the Supreme Court should step in and settle the boundary disputes between all the states bordering Assam, once and for all. Only then would justice be delivered.
