Assam continued to remain on the boil on Thursday as violence spread to two more districts, Kamrup (rural) and Baksa. Earlier, the violence was limited to Kokrajhar, Chirang and Dhubri districts.
Assam continued to remain on the boil on Thursday as violence spread to two more districts, Kamrup (rural) and Baksa. Earlier, the violence was limited to Kokrajhar, Chirang and Dhubri districts.
The trouble in Kamrup (rural) started after a Muslim cab driver was reported missing ever since he had gone to the neighbouring Baksa district under Bodoland Territorial Administered Districts (BTAD) on Wednesday evening to drop some passengers. His vehicle was found torched at Gandhibari in the district on Thursday morning.
Protesting the incident, local residents blocked the national highway at Udiana Chowk near Rangiya in Kamrup (rural) district even as miscreants set ablaze a bus and a wooden bridge at two different places in the district. The missing cab driver, Sahidul Islam, hailed from Rangiya.
The protestors clashed with the police forcing the personnel to resort to lathi-charge. The police then fired teargas shells and blank shots to restore normalcy. Later, the authorities imposed an indefinite curfew in Rangiya sub-division and the army staged a flag march there.
Meanwhile, chief minister Tarun Gogoi appealed to the people of the northeastern states who were fleeing Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, not to panic.
“Some forces are trying to destabilise the Centre and the state government. I do not deny that,” Gogoi told reporters in response to a query. He blamed rumours, being circulated through mobile phones, for the apprehension and resultant mass exodus of people of the northeast from the two south Indian states.
He said he was constantly in touch with his counterparts in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. The state government is sending a couple of teams comprising ministers and government officials to the two states. It has also convened an all-party meeting.
Meanwhile, the influential All Assam Students’ Union held Lok Sabha MP and perfume baron Badruddin Ajmal responsible for the unrest. “We found him making provocative statements, apparently to fan communal passion. The riots in BTAD were between indigenous people and foreign nationals but he is trying to give them a Hindu-Muslim colour. We ask him to stop this immediately or else he will have to pay a price for it,” AASU advisor Samujjal Bhattacharya said.
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