Striking terror, that's the name of the game

It was the last day of May. It was around 8 pm in the night at Khoraguri village, which lies in one extreme and remote corner of the Dhubri district of Lower Assam. It is inhabited mostly by the people of the Santhal tribes. Some of them were standing in a queue ouside an oil depot, when a ghastly incident of violence struck. Suddenly out of nowhere, a number of armed Bodo militants alighted on the scene and dragged 14 of these hapless people to the nearby forest and butchered them. The victims included nine women and two children. The other Santhals who were mute witnesses to the horrible act were so shocked by the barbarism that it took them about two hours to contact the police. The other Adivasis in the village are not in a mental state to express their opinions. It was left to a few youth, who came forward and told that all they have to say is that the Bodos will slowly exterminate the whole of Santhal population in this mindless manner if something is not done quickly. Since then more than 7000 tribals, mainly Santhals, have fled their homes in the Dhubri district fearing further violence. Ethnic clashes have claimed about 20 lives in this area in the last couple of months. The killings are the latest in the series of gruesome ethnic massacres involving majority Bodos and minority Santhals in western Assam. The Santhals have taken most of the beating, with a huge number driven off their homes and forced to live in relief camps spread across western Assam and North Bengal. After the recent gory incidents, the Santhals, who have fled, have taken shelter at Grahampur in the Jamarhat area. But they aren’t feeling very safe here and so have requested the district authorities to rehabilitate them to safer places. The district administration, on its part, is trying to rehabilitate them at Thongsi. Apart from temporary rehabiliation arrangements, the district administration have set up relief camps at Dhubri and Bagribari. Medical teams have also been sent to the affected areas. The other villages affected in the ethnic violence includes Pankhadal, Pathardubi, Daldali, Lalmati, Maugladubi, Axibari and Pandrogaon. The ABSU in a press release, accused the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) of being responsible for the acts of violence. The ABSU pointed out that all Bodo groups and people in general wanted peace to prevail but on the other hand some vested interests could not tolerate the unity between the Santhals and Bodos and so were trying to create misunderstanding between the two communities. The exodus by the Santhals has sent panic buttons ringing in the Bengal side too. The police and the administration fear that the sizeable population of Santhals and Bodos in the Bengal side particularly in the tea garden areas could give shelter to those crossing the border. What worries the police more in Bengal is that the militants could slip into this side disguised as refugees. About 8000 Santhal and Bodo refugees from Assam have already crossed over to Jalpaiguri and Cooch-Behar districts of Bengal after the ethnic violence in Kokrajhar district from May 1996. This has, in more ways than one, adversely affected Bengal.

However, the most gory incident to have taken place in the last few days didn’t happen in Assam or the NE region for that matter. That honour (or rather dishonour) went to the vital and strategic railway station of New Jalpaigui (NJP) in North Bengal. With the use of deadly RDX, the blast was triggered off by a high-tech timer device and it left a trail of destruction, deaths and injuries behind. Three men of the 5 Batalion of the Gorkha Rifles were among those killed in the blast. At least 20 more jawans were injured in the blast, some of them seriously. These jawans were moving to the Kargil sector and so were the main targets of this violent act. Going by the nature and execution of the act, the hand of ISI is clearly evident. It is now an open secret that the ISI operatives and the NE rebels are in touch. The ISI has provided financial assistance to the insurgent groups of the NE and has even trained the cadres of some outfits like the ULFA. Numerous radio messages and conversations between the ISI and the operatives in NE have been taped by the Army and the intelligence agencies alike. Many of them have centred around demand and supply of information regarding diversion of Army and para-military troops to the Kargil sector. ISI has been using Siliguri as a corridor for pushing its agents into India. The whole North Bengal region, due to unique geographical set up is now affected by ‘spillover insurgency’. The Cooch-Behar and Jalpaiguri districts of West Bengal have long acted as the rendezvous points between external agencies like ISI and NE militants. This region also acts as getaway and inroad into countries like Banglades and Bhutan where these militants have set up camps. This relatively new ailment in the ‘Chicken’s Neck’ has given a new dimension to the NE crisis and is now a serious zone of concern. Interestingly, just a day ago the NJP blast, three bombs were discovered on the tracks between Talakata and Domohoni stations in the Alipurduer sub division. A good train derailed as one of the explosives blasted when the train ran over the wire. A similar goods train derailment also occured at about the same place, the day following the NJP blast. It also sent the whole rail traffic out of gear for many days. Although the names of ULFA and Koch-Rajbangshi Liberation Organisation (a local outfit of North Bengal) came up as probable executioners of the ISI plan, serious doubts arise due to the sophisticated device that was used and the contrary ignorance of these outfits regarding the know how.