The Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted to probe the killing of 14 civilians in Nagaland’s Mon district submitted its preliminary report to the State government on January 9, four days after its stipulated time.
A senior official privy to the probe declined to disclose the contents of the provisional report that was prepared after the five-member SIT examined more than 60 witnesses and also interrogated members of an elite force of the Army said to have carried out the botched operation on December 4.
“It will take some time for the final report to be submitted. Reports are awaited from the Central Forensic Science Laboratory, that is the reason,” the official said.
“We have completed the examination of the Army personnel in Assam’s Jorhat who were reportedly involved in the massacre at Oting village. The other aspects of the investigation are going on smoothly,” the official added.
On January 10, Konyak civil society organisations decided to convene a summit on January 14 to chalk out their action plan over the delay in booking the culprits of the killings.
The Konyak Nagas are the dominant community in the Mon district.
Among the demands of the Konyak organisations is the trial of all the officers and jawans involved in the killing of the 14 civilians in an “applicable civil court”.
Soldiers of the Army’s elite unit on December 4 gunned down six coal miners near Oting village in a botched operation, “mistaking” them to be extremists. Seven more people were killed when the villagers, alarmed by the gunshots, attacked the soldiers.
Another person was killed in Mon, the district headquarters, when the security forces opened fire on a mob that attacked an Assam Rifles camp to protest the killings.
