- Friday, April 26, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
An official from the Indian home ministry on Wednesday (23) said the deaths of five villagers and a forest guard from the north-eastern states of Meghalaya and Assam, respectively, in a firing incident a day before was not related to the border dispute between the two states, The Hindu reported.
Himanta Biswa Sarma, the chief minister of Assam which is ruled by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said in Delhi that a clash took place between the villagers and forest personnel over smuggling of timber. He added that “unprovoked firing” could have been controlled and noted that concerned officials have already been suspended, The Hindu report added.
He also said that the case will be referred either to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) or the National Investigation Agency (NIA), both elite investigative agencies.
“We will be requesting a probe either by CBI or NIA. State government is already investigating and the officials responsible for the act have been placed under suspension. Villagers cut some timber and were carrying them in a truck. There was some unprovoked firing and it could have been controlled. I spoke to Meghalaya CM on the issue,” Sarma said.
Sarma’s Meghalaya counterpart Conrad Sangma from the National People’s Party said in a tweet on Tuesday (22) that police and forest personnel from Assam entered his state and started firing without any provocation.
Meanwhile, Press Trust of India reported that a group of villagers from Meghalaya allegedly set a forest office in Assam’s West Karbi Anglong district on fire. The villagers, carrying machetes, rods and sticks, gathered near a beat office under the Kheroni forest range in Assam and set it on fire.
Documents and two-wheelers parked in the office complex were also torched. However, no one was injured in the incident.
The boundary issue between Assam and Meghalaya has been an old one. In March this year, the two states resolved their dispute at six out of 12 locations along a border that runs more than 880 kilometres.
Indian home minister Amit Shah, who presided over an event where Sarma and Sangma signed an agreement on the boundary issue, recalled his remarks made in 2019 that the “Assam government should take the lead in solving boundary disputes with other States and other States should also come forward”.
Meghalaya was carved out of Assam as an autonomous state in 1970 and became a full-fledged one two years later.
