#dnaEdit: Senseless killings

A series of attacks on innocent, unarmed adivasis in five places in Assam, resulting in the deaths of 51 people, including women and children, stand out for their senseless violence and cowardice. The National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit faction)’s dastardly acts have been condemned by both the Centre and the state Congress government headed by Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi. The Centre’s overtures of peace to maintain calm in the region have fallen on deaf ears. With the state police hobbled by lack of intelligence and too ill-equipped to combat militants carrying sophisticated weapons, the extremists continue to enjoy a free run. Now an additional 50 companies of central forces will be pressed into service to battle one of the worst forms of insurgency wreaking havoc in Assam. Union home minister Rajnath Singh’s visit to the state, to assess the security preparedness, is aimed at sending a warning to the perpetrators; to signal that the Centre has taken a strong exception to the killings of innocent people. Already curfew has been imposed in certain parts of the Sonitpur district, affected by the attacks. 

The outlawed Songbijit group had struck in August this year when members of the group dragged a teenage girl out of her home in Assam’s Chirang district and shot her dead in front of her parents. She was suspected to be a police informer, who, the faction believed, had told the police about the hideouts of five militants. They were neutralised, and the group chose to take revenge by killing the girl on that very day, later dumping her body in the fields. The act of violence triggered massive outrage but, nothing worthwhile came out of the protests.

The recent bout of violence comes almost two months after the NDFB faction threatened to pull out of the peace process if its president Ranjan Daimary and other militants in police custody were not released. The government didn’t yield to the pressure tactic because of Daimary’s involvement in the 2008 Assam serial blasts that killed over 100 people. He was later arrested in Bangladesh. 

Assam has been the hotbed of insurgency since the 1990s with the United Liberation Front of Asom taking to arms in the struggle to establish a sovereign Assam. In the intervening decades, several other groups sprang up in the region clamouring for separate statehoods. The violence was geared towards ethnic cleansing, leading to a virtual collapse of law and order. Earlier, in March, Assam was in the news for the killings of scores of Muslims by tribal separatists. Land disputes with Bangladesh and massive infiltration from the neighbouring country were the primary causes of violence unleashed by Bodo militants in the north-eastern part of the state. 

The NDFB comprises hardliners who would negotiate only on their own terms. Daimary was offered Amnesty by Gogoi in 2003, but he refused. The sporadic spells of ceasefire agreement it has had with the government have been violated by both the parties. The NDFB’s primary objective is to secede from the Indian Union and establish a sovereign Bodoland. And, they hope to achieve it by putting pressure on the government by killing innocent civilians.

The Centre should come down heavily on the killers, but at the same time it should address the causes that have led these groups to adopt extreme measures. Had the North-east not been a victim of years of consistent apathy and neglect, the situation could have been very different today. And, for that the blame squarely rests with the central as well as the state governments.