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Adivasis soft targets for Bodo militants

Activists of the Assam Tea Tribes Student Association during a protest against attacks on Adivasis by Bodo militants, at Biswanath Chariali in Assam on Wednesday. AFP

Bijay Sankar Bora

Tribune News Service

Guwahati, December 24

The Assam Government’s repeated claims on improved law and order situation fell flat on Tuesday when 71 Adivasi villagers were massacred by the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit faction).
The carnage occurred within hours of Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi making a statement that his government was not bothered about militant groups such as the NDFB-S as the parent NDFB was a bigger threat.
Even Assam DGP Khagen Sarma had recently termed NDFB-S a small militant group with hardly over 200 cadres.Gogoi today said he was clueless as to why the NDFB-S, which is notorious for carrying out extortion and abductions in remote areas in Bodoland, killed innocent Adivasis. "The killing of women and children is unacceptable," said an apparently shaken CM.
The outfit is a breakaway faction of the parent NDFB (Ranjan Daimary). Sources said its barbaric assault appears to be in retaliation against the intensified operations by the Army and police against it. Two cadres of the NDFB were gunned down in Kokrajhar by security forces last week and a few others were killed recently in sustained operations against the group.
The group targeted remote villages close to India-Bhutan border in Kokrajhar district and Assam-Arunachal Pradesh boundary in Sonitpur district taking advantage of the lack of police presence and Army in these areas. These innocent people were soft targets for NDFB-S militants taking shelter in Bhutan and Arunachal areas across the border, said sources The leader of the outfit, Songbijit, is hiding in Myanmar and controls operations from there, said Chief Minister Gogoi.
The NDFB-S wants a sovereign Bodoland. The NDFB-S was formed after the parent NDRF (Ranjan Daimary) came forward for peace talks with the Central government after its chairman Ranjan Daimary was captured in Bangladesh and handed over to the India authority. Daimary is out on bail. He was chargesheeted by the CBI for masterminding October 30, 2008 serial blasts in Assam that left over 100 dead and over 400 injured.