ULFA kills & struts

“Look how V K Duggal (Union Home Secretary who was here for a security review just days ago) speaks. He is provoking our boys. The government should have continued with the talks process. But instead it (the government) has shut the doors and is asking us to walk in,” Gogoi told The Sunday Express today.

Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today admitted it was not possible to provide protection to every citizen and termed the killing spree as “an act of cowardice.”

But the ULFA leader’s anger could hardly have been more misplaced given the profile of the victims.

Take 19-year-old Sabita of Dhola, 40 km east of Tinsukia, on the banks of the Brahmaputra. She had eloped with 29-year-old Mukesh and both had put up in the house of one Sriprasad Kanu, a workman sardar in a brick kiln at Sikorajan, thinking that was the safest place to hide until her parents’ temper cooled off.

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.

Or Baban Das (22), Kamal Das (35), Rajeswar Das (32) and Pramode Das (32), who had all come from the Vaishali district of Bihar to work in a brick kiln at Hatigarh-Balipara under the Duliajan police station. All were on a seasonal contract to work at hardly Rs 70 a day. All of them are now dead.

Javed Sheikh (25) sold clothes at the local marketplace in Longsowal, hardly 15 km east of Tinsukia. He and five others, Binod Kumar Gupta (45), Digan Prasad Gupta (60), Arvind Prasad Gupta (32), Manoj Kumar Gupta (42), Arvind Kumar Gupta (13), all died on the spot as two armed militants who came on a motorbike, opened fire at the marketplace around the same time last evening.

Away at Ghoramara, a chapori (temporary island) on the Brahmaputra, east of Sadiya, 13 persons were killed, all around 8:30 last night. But the place is so inaccessible — no telephone, no mobile, no road, only country-boats can reach — that the news of the massacre reached the nearest Sadiya police station only this morning.

The police in Tinsukia seem to have lost count of the number of incidents, not to speak of bodies. Tinsukia SP Prasanta Bhuyan is still not sure whether to put the death figures at 32 or 33.

“So many people have been killed. And it is all over, at as many as eight locations,” he says.

“Most of the places are remote and inaccessible. The people are soft targets and most vulnerable,” says Bhuyan. Ghoramara, under Sadiya police station, for instance, can be reached only after crossing three channels of the Brahmaputra and walking for two hours.

It was only last month that ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa had said that “outsiders” had set up “mini Bihars”, “mini Rajasthans” and “mini Bengals” in different districts of Assam and called for their ouster.

Meanwhile, in Patna today, the Nitish Kumar government issued a red alert across the state fearing a backlash on trains going to or coming from Assam through Bihar. A high-level team comprising three senior ministers and two officers was also sent to Assam.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar talked to Assam CM Tarun Gogoi as well as Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil. He announced a compensation of Rs 1 lakh each and urged the Assam government and the Centre for compensation. “The incidents are most condemnable. Till now we have reports that at least 40 Biharis have been killed in Tinsukia and Dibrugarh districts. This will endanger the country’s unity”, said Kumar while expressing grief over the incident.

In 2004, Assamese passengers were assaulted and women were molested by angry groups protesting a similar killing of Biharis in Assam. It’s essential since all trains bound for New

Delhi and other parts of the country have to pass through Bihar.

Rajdhani targeted

Separately, a militant group patronised by the ULFA set off a bomb on the tracks damaging the air-conditioning unit and the water tank of a three-tier coach of the Dibrugarh-bound Rajdhani Express from New Delhi. There were no casualties in the explosion.

With J P Yadav in Patna