Five more bodies were found on Wednesday morning from two trouble-torn districts of Assam, taking the toll in the violence unleashed by ultras to 41.
Almost 5 years after the 'encounter' between the Assam Rifles and alleged extremists, families of the five victims of the counter-insurgency action in Sonitpur district of Assam, will receive some compensation, thanks to the National Human Rights Commission.
Only 20 per cent of the nearly 50,000 licenced arms existing in Assam have been deposited so far with authorities in the run up to the three-phased Lok Sabha elections in the state.
The recent bouts of violence by suspected Bodo militias that killed over 30 hapless 'Muslims, mostly children and women, and rendered several thousands homeless in lower Assam recently, once again offers a shocking glimpse of the horrendous game of violent communalism being played by the Congress government of Assam in furtherance of its cynical power politics for the last several years.' 'The result is, the state is a simmering communal cauldron that sporadically erupts at the slightest real or imagined provocation,' says R N Ravi.
The end for the doughty soldier came a little before noon, three days after he was miraculously pulled out alive from under 30 feet of ice-and-snow debris where he lay buried for six days on the unforgiving Siachen glacier.
Bomb blasts on Thursday rocked Assam and Manipur during Independence Day functions injuring one person even as chief ministers asked extremists to abjure violence and return to the mainstream.
"We did not vote for the BPF (Bodoland People's Front) candidate in Lok Sabha polls, that's why we were attacked," alleged 75-year-old Iman Ali.
He said 90 IS sympathisers had been arrested across the country.
'The violence that shook Assam was a direct outcome of the state's ethnic problem... The tension that created a rift between the Bodos and the non-Bodos for years found a blood-spattered expression.' Former NSG chief Ranjit Shekhar Mooshahary, the Trinamool Congress candidate from Kokrajhar, speaks to Indrani Roy/Rediff.com about last week's carnage in Assam.