The terror attacks by the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit) on Adivasi villages on the night of December 23 have triggered a humanitarian crisis, displacing over 10,000 Bodos and Adivasi forest dwellers from 35 villages within an eight-km radius from this settlement in Kokrajhar district for the third time.
After being displaced during ethnic clashes between the Bodos and the Adivasis in 1996 and 1998, most of them started rebuilding their lives only about eight years ago.
The border settlement, with Bodo, Adivasi and Nepalese populations, is about 65 km from Kokrajhar town, the headquarters of the Bodoland Territorial Council.
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The number of people in the relief camps continues to swell as panic gripped inhabitants of the Ultapani reserve forests, who do not possess land rights.
On Sunday, scores of people were seen flocking to the relief camps, leaving behind their granaries full of paddy harvested just before the trouble broke out and taking along whatever little belongings — utensils, solar plates, buckets, clothes and so on — they could carry on their bicycles and pull carts or in their hands.
Miscreants torched the abandoned houses of some who shifted to the camps earlier, reducing their paddy stock and other goods and properties to ashes. Authorities said the number of people in the relief camps in the violence-hit Kokrajhar, Sonitpur, Chirang and Udalguri districts swelled to 1,76,440. They include 1,15,337 displaced Adivasis taking shelter in 72 camps and 61,003 Bodos in 64 camps.
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“The NDFB(S) militants, some 20 of them and all in black attire, came to our village when the sun had just turned red. They fired indiscriminately for long. I had gone to fetch water and fled into the jungle after hearing gunshots. I came out much after the rattle of gunfire stopped, returned home after the Army arrived at night. I found my sister Sumila Hasda (14) lying dead and younger sister Phulmoni (3) crying in pain with a bullet wound,” Durga Hasda told The Hindu at the Saralpara relief camp in which over 8,000 displaced Adivasi forest dwellers from 26 villages have taken shelter. The attack left 14 dead and three injured.
The 39-km road connecting the National Highway passing through Kokrajhar district with this small border settlement and those of Bodo and Adivasi forest dwellers on patches inside the reserve forests under the Haltugaon forest division on both sides of the road wore a deserted look. The porous India-Bhutan border just near the border pillar witnessed a flurry of activity on Sunday afternoon with inmates of the Naharani Bodo camp, opened on the campus of SSB camp, being shifted to a new one about two km away.