Congress and Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) supporters have been engaged in pitched battles across the state since the AGP launched a statewide agitation demanding dismissal of the Tarun Gogoi Government over the arrest of education minister Ripun Bora. He was caught while trying to bribe a CBI officer in New Delhi on Tuesday.

At least 10 AGP workers were seriously injured when a group of Congress workers attacked them as they were trying to burn an effigy of the arrested minister in his hometown, Gohpur, in Sonitpur district.

The Congress workers also damaged several vehicles belonging to the AGP members, an AGP spokesman said here on Friday.

Congress workers attacked and assaulted members of opposition parties in Sivasagar when the latter took out a procession demanding stringent punishment for Bora. Congress workers also pelted stones and beat up several supporters of the AGP, AGP(P) and Jatiya Aikya Mancha (JAM), as they took out processions and burnt effigies of both Bora and Gogoi.

Normal life was disrupted in Sivasagar on Friday, as the AGP, AGP(P) and JAM called a dawn-to-dusk bandh in the district to protest against the attacks on their workers by Congress supporters. Life came to a standstill in most of the tea-growing districts of upper Assam on Friday, following a 12-hour-long bandh called by the All Adivasi Students’ Association of Assam, demanding exemplary punishment for Bora.

Bora was arrested in New Delhi while he was trying to offer Rs 10 lakh in cash to a CBI officer who was probing the murder of Daniel Topno; Bora’s name is understood to have figured in the murder case. Topno, a political adversary of the education minister, was killed on September 27, 2000, after he had sought a Congress ticket to contest the state Assembly elections from Gohpur LAC. Bora won the seat in 2001.

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