Suspected ULFA militants, armed with AK-47s, stormed the labour camp at Sikorajan and killed both of them along with two others last night, pushing the death toll in Friday’s evening night of terror to 48. Tinsukia district alone accounted for 34 deaths while eight were reported from Dibrugarh.

Six persons were also killed in a village in Dhemaji district on the north bank of the Brahmaputra across Dibrugarh.

Like Sabita and Mukesh, all the victims are innocent workers, most of them originally from Bihar, men and women who worked as daily-wagers in brick kilns — at Rs 70-100 a day — or vendors at remote, inaccessible local markets and towns or supplied milk to households in Dibrugarh.

“Tinsukia does have a large domicile Bihari population which has been here for three to four generations. They came here to work in coal fields, the Digboi oilfields, plywood mills and in the steamer company during the British period,” said A K Absar Hazarika, Deputy Commissioner, Tinsukia.

And, as far as seasonal labourers are concerned, Hazarika put their figure at around 2-3000.

“Seasonal labourers’ arrival has gone down since the 1993 December violence in which the ULFA killed nearly 100 Biharis and scared away several thousand who never returned,” he said.

Those who didn’t were among those targeted. They have nothing to do with ULFA’s armed struggle except that they symbolise what the ULFA calls “part of India’s colonial dominance over Assam.”

Ordinary, faceless people, like Lochan Yadav, Ram Darad Yadav, Murat Yadav, Ramsewak Yadav and Jairam Yadav, all cattle rearers of Sarkholiya Chapori, an island in the Brahmaputra north of Dibrugarh town.

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