armed with sophisticated AK 47 series rifles entered the village and started firing indiscriminately targeting the villagers. Panic stricken, all the villagers ran haphazardly towards the river Beki, a distributary of the river Manas in the Manas National Park (MNP) that flows through the village with the villagers jumping into the river-water in a bid to save their lives. The group of miscreants chased the villagers even while they tried to cross the river and thereafter set the village ablaze.

"Miscreants wreak havoc in the BATD areas of Assam. Is it setting the stage for a return to chaos in Bodoland? Is it poll motivated? What implications does it have on the call for a separate Bodoland? Ratna Bharali Talukdar seeks the answers."

“I was about to take advice from the healer for my one year old baby who is suffering from a minor illness and suddenly noticed a large group of miscreants  marching towards our village and opening fire. I also saw horror-struck villagers running at gunpoint towards the river. All of a sudden I found myself amongst them with the baby on my lap and finally jumped into the river, tried to swim as much as  I could till I reached the other bank,’’ said Abida, as she narrated the train of events of the day.

It was not easy for her to cross the river carrying the baby in one arm as miscreants targeted them even as they were swimming, but somehow she managed to save the one year old.  Reaching the other bank, she could not locate her son Ariful amongst the survivors. His bullet-ridden body was recovered from the river bed the next day after villagers of the surrounding areas initiated a search operation along with security forces for those who were still missing. In the absence of most of the males who always have to leave the village in search of daily wage earning jobs, women and children had become easy targets for the miscreants. 

Since that moment, the temporary shed under the trampoline sheets on the river bank of Beki, has become the home for Abida and 498 other villagers of the twin villages of Nanke-Khagrabari and Narayanguri.

Assam - a State that has been experiencing a series of violence and clashes between tribes and communities since the early part of the nineties, is once again witnessing communal clashes which had flared up in the early part of May, immediately after the polling process was over after the killing of 46 innocent people in Kokrajhar and Baksa districts of Bodoland Territorial Area Districts (BTAD) area.

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