Family members of five men, killed by suspected extremists near Tinsukia on Thursday, have urged political parties and NGOs representing different communities not to give a communal colour to their loss.
The Assam police meanwhile said the “cold-blooded murder” had the signs of having been committed by the outlawed faction of the United Liberation Front of Asom, ULFA-Independent, which opposes talks with the government.
“I have lost a brother. I don’t want Assam to shut down over our loss and create bad blood that could take the life of somebody else’s brother or son or husband,” Subal Namasudra, the elder brother of Dhananjay Namasudra, one of the victims, said.
The 22-year-old Dhananjay was one of the five men of Bisonimukh-Kherbari, about 45 km from Tinsukia, gunned down by six masked men in military fatigues.
Last words
“Study well [for an exam the next day] — these were my father’s last words before he went out, never to return alive,” said a tearful Sumati Das, daughter of another victim, 50-year-old Subal Das, who had nurtured hopes of her becoming a government officer some day.
Ajit Debnath, president of a local Bengali students’ organisation, said the villagers were aware that “vested interests” could politicise their tragedy.
“We never had any problem with our Assamese neighbours, never will,” he said.
Bisonimukh-Kherbari is an all-Bengali village under the Assamese-dominated Araimuria panchayat across the road that leads to the iconic Dhola-Sadiya Bridge. But most of the panchayat leaders are from the Gorkha-dominated Tol Laopani village nearby.
“The killings are an aberration, and we will not allow it to cast a shadow on the bonding among diverse communities whose children go to Assamese medium schools and are in some ways more Assamese than the Assamese themselves,” Jagadish Bhuyan, a former Sadiya MLA and a local resident, said.
He advised a team of Trinamool Congress MPs including Derek O'Brien scheduled to visit the village on Sunday to console the families of the victims but not to play with their emotions.
'ULFA-I involved'
Assam's Director General of Police Kuladhar Saikia said the Tinsukia district police arrested a suspected linkman of the ULFA-I, Diklai Gogoi, from Sadiya on Friday night. “The man, arrested earlier in connection for alleged link with the outfit, is being interrogated," he said.
The affected village on the banks of the Lohit River is in Sadiya police district. Mugdha Jyoti Mahanta, the chief of the adjoining Tinsukia district assisting in the investigation, said t the police have no doubts about the involvement of the ULFA-I, which denied carrying out the killing.
"The modus operandi clearly points to them. The extremists have been selecting villages bordering Arunachal Pradesh for hit and run operations. We have information that they went in the direction of Changlang (in Arunachal Pradesh, controlled by Naga rebels),” Mr Mahanta told The Hindu .
Meanwhile, a team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) visited Bisonimukh-Kherbari and met the lone survivor of Thursday incident — Sahadeb Namasudra, who has been provided security and asked not to leave the village without informing the local police station.
Sahadeb could be targeted by the extremists again, police said.
Shutdown
Stray incidents of violence and damage of vehicles marked the second day of a shutdown called by Bengali organisations to protest Thursday night's killings. The organisations, however, reduced their bandh from 24 hours to 12 hours on Saturday.
