Renowned spiritual leader and founder of the Art of Living, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, on Wednesday visited the riot-hit districts of Chirang and Kokrajhar in Assam with the objective of healing the wounds of the recent clashes. He visited several relief camps and interacted with the inmates.
The total number of people killed in flooding and landslides in the state this year has gone up to 76. While 50 people were killed in inundation, 26 died due to landslides.
The Assam government has decided to hand over all cases related to the ethnic violence -- that recently rocked Kokrajhar, Chirang and Dhubri districts of Assam -- to the Central Bureau of Investigation to nab the culprits who masterminded the violence.
Thousands across Assam on Tuesday paid a tearful homage to those who lost their lives in the serial blasts that had rocked the state on October 30, 2008. Ninety people were killed and over 540 were injured when nine serial blasts ripped through four places in the state Guwahati, Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon and Barpeta Road on that 'black friday'.
Strongly backing Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi over his handling of ethnic violence in the state, senior Congress leader Digvijay Singh on Thursday hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party accusing it of 'adding fuel to the fire'.
Terming the situation in violence-hit districts of Assam as 'deplorable', West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday said the state will provide shelter to refugees fleeing trouble-torn areas.
One more person was killed in police firing during clashes between minority immigrants and Bodos in lower Assam's Dhubri district even as fresh violence in Baksa district left four persons seriously injured on Thursday.
The Army on Wednesday mobilised around 1,000 personnel for deployment in four violence hit districts of Assam and has begun conducting flag marches to ensure safety and security of people there.
For reasons political as well as social, the Bodo tribe and the agrarian religious minority community have been living for decades in an atmosphere of mistrust under the jurisdiction of the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous district Council.
In the wake of violent ethnic clashes, the Army staged a flag march in violence-affected Kokrajhar, Chirang and Dhubri districts of Assam on Wednesday morning.
Assam remained cut off from the rest of the country by rail as train services remained suspended all over the state, with hundreds of Assam-bound passengers being stranded in Coochbehar in West Bengal on the border with Assam and other places
Shoot-at-sight orders were issued and indefinite curfew clamped in entire Kokrajhar district of Assam following fresh violence on Monday, as the toll in the ethnic violence mounted to 19.
Two more bodies were recovered on Monday taking the toll to 19 in the violence in Assam's Bodoland Territorial Administered Districts, as the Rajdhani Express was stopped by protestors in Kokrajhar district, police said.
The situation in Assam's trouble-torn Bodoland Territorial Administered Districts was "moving towards normalcy" and police have set up 119 new police pickets to help rehabilitation of the affected people, official sources said on Tuesday.
With the Centre worried over some organisations trying to stoke social tension by calling bandhs in Assam where continuing violence has claimed 88 lives, the state government on Wednesday officially declared all shutdowns as illegal.
The Central Bureau of Investigation which is probing the cause of the riots in lower Assam has not found involvement of any insurgent outfit from Bangladesh, Union Home Joint Secretary Sambhu Singh has said.
As many as 8,186 people have left for their homes from relief camps in riot-hit districts in Assam.
Curfew in Rangiya sub-division of Kamrup Rural district was relaxed on Friday even as no incident of fresh violence was reported from any part of Assam.
At a time when tension was already high among the North Eastern people in different parts of the country and rumours were triggering their exodus, a statement by the All India Assam Students Union leader in Guwahati about the death of an Assamese passenger in Andhra Pradesh has further heightened the tension.
After a calm of ten days fresh violence broke out in parts of lower Assam claiming five lives and pushing the overall toll to 61 on Sunday.
The Centre has authorised the Assam government to deploy more than 11,000 paramilitary personnel in the state's violence-hit districts and dispatched a C-135 heavy lift aircraft with medical teams and supplies.
With the recovery of a ody in the violence-hit lower Assam districts, the death toll in the unrest on Friday rose to 45, while the army staged flag marches in worst-hit Kokrajhar and curfew was relaxed in some of the affected districts.
A day after the arrest of party Member of Legislative Assembly Pradeep Brahma by Assam police on charges of inciting mob violence in Kokrajhar district in the recent riot, the Bodoland People's Front on Friday clarified that it would continue with its alliance with the ruling Congress notwithstanding the arrest of the party MLA.
Altogether 2,92,852 inmates are currently living in 228 relief camps in four trouble-torn districts of lower Assam, while 10,636 inmates having left the camps during the last 24 hours.
Vardhan said the ICMR is actively researching on reports of COVID-19 reinfection and although the number of such cases is negligible at this moment, the government is fully seized of the importance of the matter, the health ministry said in a statement.
The blast occurred about one-and-a-half kilometres from the Naranarayan Setu at Jugigupa at around 10.20 am when an Army convoy was passing, sources in the Army said.
"There has been talk that the flare-up could be due to Bangladeshi immigrants. But in my reading, that is not the case. This issue is more or less saturated. The number of Bangladeshi immigrants in Assam has come down a great deal and they have been moving to other states and settling down," says former home secretary G K Pillai, who is from the Assam cadre.
Operations were on Friday intensified against NDFB-S militants along the border with Arunachal Pradesh even as the death toll in the massacre rose to 81.
The Assam government on Monday said that even though they had prior information about an attack on adivasi villagers in Assam by the militant group NDFB (S), the remoteness of location prevented security forces from reaching there in time.
Madhubala Mandal, a widow, returned home to her hearing impaired daughter on Wednesday evening, shortly after being freed from a camp for illegal immigrants in Kokrajhar.
In the first incident of poll-related violence on the eve of tomorrow's second phase of polling in Assam, two persons have been killed in Kokrajhar district.
At least two Sashastra Seema Bal jawans were killed and three others injured after they were ambushed by suspected terrorists belonging to the anti-talks faction of National Democratic Front of Bodoland. The ambush happened at the thickly-forested Singhikhola-Laubheta area along the to Indo-Bhutan border in western Assam's Kokrajhar district at around 11 am on Monday.
About 100 innocent people lost their lives and over 400 hundred were maimed for the rest of their lives in the serial blasts triggered by terrorists at three crowded places in Guwahati besides Kokrajhar, Barpeta Road and Bongaigaon in Assam.
The UNICEF said an estimated 2.4 million children have been affected by the recent floods in the country.
A group of 5 armed militants of the anti-talk ULFA faction opened fire at some people at Bahbon village.
Four more persons were gunned down in Assam by NDFB militants on Tuesday while a man succumbed to his injuries, taking the toll in the overnight violence to 23, as the rebels warned of more killings.
Nine more bodies were recovered from a village in Baksa district on Saturday morning, taking the toll to 32 in the violence unleashed by National Democratic Front of Bodoland-Songbijit militants in Bodoland Territorial Administration Districts area in Assam.
The deluge, which had affected 2.5 lakh people in 11 districts on Wednesday, spread to six more districts on Thursday affecting 4.23 lakh people, it said.
The army, SDRF and NDRF are assisting the district administrations in evacuating the affected population to safer places, the authority said.
At least seven persons, including the train driver, were injured when five bogies and the engine of the Kolkata-bound Garibrath Express derailed in the wee hours of Thursday after militants of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland blasted a railway track in Assam's Kokrajhar district. The incident occurred at approximately 2.25 am after militants of the banned group blasted rail tracks at a spot between Gosaigaon and Chowtara in lower Assam, said the police.
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