Bullets fired by National Democratic Front of Boroland (Songbijit) militants took five lives and injured four in this backward Adivasi village in Kokrajhar district on the night of December 23.
“We were all ready to celebrate Christmas, offer the Bodos from neighbouring villages pitha [traditional rice cakes] and other eatables made after the harvest,” Enosh Tudu told The Hindu at the Pakhriguri relief camp.
“We bought clothes for our children. We had no inkling of any attack as the militants had never disturbed us, though they often pass through the village brandishing their arms. Suddenly, on that fateful night, they came and fired indiscriminately and we still do not know why they chose to target us.”
Some 1,032 Adivasi families of 17 villages have been in this camp since December 24.
The attack has revived bitter memories of clashes with the Bodos in 1996 and 1998. In 1996, Mr. Tudu, then only 20, survived a barrage of AK-47 bullets fired by militants during an ethnic clash between the Bodos and the Adivasis. Nearly 20 people of the Adivasi village were killed in the clash in which the entire village as well as nearby Adivasi villages were set ablaze. Clashes broke out once again in 1998, displacing them for a second time. Mr. Tudu returned to his village after languishing in sub-human conditions for over 12 years. His three children were born in the relief camp and had grown up with no experience of village life.
“With a paltry rehabilitation grant of Rs. 50,000, we started building a new life. Bitter memories faded and we started living with our Bodo neighbours in harmony — working in the same paddy fields, fishing together, going to the same village market. Now, we have been displaced for a third time,” he said.
A few officials of the district administration were seen visiting the camp to take stock of the relief operations. Till Friday, 500 blankets were distributed among 4,390 people (2,705 adults and 1,685 minors) of the camp in Pakhriguri Lower Primary School. Rations included 600 grams of rice for each adult and 400 grams for each minor.
About 40 km away, most of the 4,182 Bodo evacuees from 18 villages taking shelter in the New Basbari relief camp in the Serfanguri police station were equally bewildered. Why were their houses torched by Adivasi people? “We have no enmity between us. We share water from the same irrigation canal of the Champati river,” said Raza Narzary of Thaigarguri. “Landless Bodos work as sharecroppers in Advasi landowners’ paddy fields and vice versa. My paddy field is adjacent to the paddy field of Joseph Murmu of Jitpur Santhal village. We regularly go to the Audang daily market and also to the Karigaon market. But since December 24, I have not met him. I have still not been able to understand what went wrong.”
Most houses in nine of these 18 villages have been set ablaze in retaliatory attacks by miscreants from the Adivasi villages.
Relief camp occupants from those villages which have not been attacked this time say they have fled their houses leaving everything behind, wary after the experience in 1996 and 1998. Over one lakh people belonging to both communities have taken shelter in 73 camps in Kokrajhar district where 34 people were killed (27 Adivasis and two Bengalis were massacred by NDFB [Songbijit] militants on December 23 night) and four Bodos were killed in retaliatory attacks by miscreants among the Adivasis.
In 1996, violent clashes between the Bodos and Adivasis claimed 198 lives and displaced 2,02,684 people of both the communities belonging to 42,214 families of Kokrajhar and undivided Bongaigaon districts. Even as most of them continued to stay in relief camps, another bout of clashes between the Bodos and Adivasis occurred in 1998 which claimed 186 lives and displaced about 94,000 people belonging to both communities.
