Bodo militants kill 14 in Assam

Bodo militants shot dead 14 people in Assam on the eve of the 36-hour statewide bandh called by the All-Bodo Students Union in demand for a separate state.

Official sources on Tuesday said the militants killed seven people at Lahapara, four at Hatimora in Kamrup district, two at Mikashi and one at Dhomoma in Nalbari district during the past 24 hours.

The state government has made elaborate security arrangements to deal with any situation during the bandh which will begin at 0500 hours IST on Wednesday.

Reports said the extremists picked up seven people from their houses at Lahapara village under the Rangiya subdivision of Kamrup district on Monday night, tied them to trees and shot them. Six of them dead on the spot while the seventh succumbed to his injuries at the Medical College Hospital in Guwahati.

In Hatimora village, the rebels abducted four people and shot them dead.

Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta, condemning the brutal killing, directed state government officials to make all-out efforts to apprehend the culprits.

In Lahapara, the victims include five members of a family -- Narayan Burman, Biren Burman, Boloy Burman, Siba Burman and Dayal Burman. The sixth victim was Chittaranjan Paul. They were resting on the bank of the Boroliya river when the Bodo militants -- dressed in military fatigues -- attacked them.

The militants then went to the Hatimora village nearby, picked up Gopal Sarkar, Khitish Sarkar, Madhab Sarkar and Pradeep Sarkar and killed them in similar fashion.

Meanwhile, the tripartite talks between the Centre, the Assam government, the ABSU and other Bodo organisations, originally scheduled for Tuesday in New Delhi, to discuss the Bodo problem has been cancelled after the ABSU refused to participate.

The main reason why the ABSU declined to attend the tripartite talks was its refusal to discuss the Bodo accord which it signed in 1993. It not only denounced the Bodo accord but also rejected the Bodoland Autonomous Council. The ABSU has gone back to its original demand for a separate Bodoland state.

ABSU president U G Brahma said the Bodo accord had been accepted in 1993 by the leadership on an experimental basis when they discovered the Centre was not in a position to create any new states in the country.

The ABSU maintained that the BAC was an impractical concept with no constitutional validity. The council, ABSU leaders said, was created with artificial provisions and was an appendage of the state government. The ABSU had formally rejected the BAC and the Bodo accord in March last year to revive its original demand for Bodoland.

Although the ABSU demanded tripartite talks in its latest memorandum submitted to Assam Governor Lok Nath Mishra on July 27, it boycotted the discussions on the ground that it was not prepared to discuss anything short of a separate Bodoland state.

UNI