ULFA strikes again, 7 more killed as toll climbs to 55

LONGSOWAL (TINSUKIA), JANUARY 7: Hours after Minister of State for Home Shriprakash Jaiswal was booed away by angry residents of Longsowal where suspected ULFA militants killed eight people on Friday night, another seven Bihar migrants, working as labour hands, were killed this evening at Bhoralipukhuri near Kakotibari in Assam’s Sibsagar district.

The latest attack, which took place around 8.30 pm, raises the death toll to 55. 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.

In Longsowal, 20 km from Tinsukia, the anger is rising. People are yet to cremate the bodies. “We want leaders from Bihar to come and see what has happened to us,” said Virendra Gupta, who survived because he had gone to Tinsukia on some work.

Jaiswal had to face the ire of the residents, most of them from Bihar, who earn their living by running petty shops for tea garden labourers. “The minister kept repeating that he would go and tell the Chief Minister and the Prime Minister. We do not want assurances. We want action, adequate compensation,” said Lalit who sells clothes, roaming villages on a bicycle. They have demanded Rs 10 lakh for each of the dead and Rs 3 lakh for the injured, and jobs for the affected families.

The bodies of the dead, all in wooden boxes covered with ice, are being guarded by the residents, waiting for a team of ministers from Bihar. “Yes, we want to block the road. We want to tell the world how insecure we are, despite staying next to the National Highway on which hundreds of army and police vehicles pass everyday,” said Lalit.

Longsowal is on NH 37, just 20 km from Tinsukia town and six km short of Doomdooma. There are two police stations on the highway on either side, roughly four to five km apart.

Army convoys move out almost everyday from the 2 Div Hqs at Dinjan to various places, including Arunachal Pradesh.

“If we are unsafe, imagine what would be the state of our people who live in remote chapories (winter river islands) on the Brahmaputra,” says Radheyshyam Prasad, another shopkeeper, who claims that the Longsowal cluster of Biharis go back to three generations. “We may be of Bihari origin, but we belong to this place. Our ancestors came during the days of the British,” said Jainarain, a shopkeeper. Rekha Kumari (8), daughter of Parsuram Prasad, who was shot in both legs and is now at the AMC Hospital in Dibrugarh, said the militants entered their house by breaking the bamboo door. “They barged in with guns and opened fire. I got shot on both legs and the abdomen,” she said.

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