Honorable Chief Minister,

This is with profound grief and alarm that we seek your attention towards the gruesome genocide of Bengali-speaking Muslims which is being carried out in Kokrajhar district of Assam by Bodo militant groups. The following incidents on 1st and 2nd May 2014 is latest in a series of ethnic cleansing where over 40 people mostly women and children were butchered mercilessly with sophisticated illegal arms, with dead bodies still being discovered and many more still missing. This atrocity on human rights has been carried out tacitly over the years through complicity of local administration under the very nose of your State Government.

Since 25th April, 2014 Muslims from the villages under Harbhanga Polling Booth had been tortured by the police in retaliation of killing of one election duty police personnel on previous day owing to a rumour of EVM malfunctioning. The villagers were brutally beaten up, elderly, women, adolescent girls, children and three months old infant were not spared. The household belongings were destroyed money and valuables were looted, dignity of women was compromised. This was followed by the communally provocative comments on 30th April by legislator Pramila Rani Brahma of the Bodoland Peoples Front (BPF) party who is also a former Agricultural Minister of Assam. She alleged that Muslims of Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD) did not vote for the BPF candidate, Chandan Brahma, for the Lok Sabha elections which would lead to Sri Brahma’s defeat. As a consequence of her statements, the very next day, i.e. on 1st May, 2014 at least eleven Muslims including women and children were gunned down by the armed militants and injured another four in two different locations BTAD area. On 2nd May, 2014, a heavily armed group of around forty militants killed at least 21 people including 9 children and set ablaze 70 houses in Gampara village under Baksa district of BTAD. The survivors told that the attack was carried out under the leadership of Amiya Brahma, the Ranger of Bashbari Forest Range. The miscreants used the .303 rifle of forest guard. On 3rd of May, 2014, Amiya Brahma along with five others was arrested for involvement in the heinous crime against humanity.

Non-Bodos have been continuously oppressed, killed and tortured under the ruling BPF. This continuous violence on Non-Bodos and Muslims in particular is a meticulously planned “ethnic cleansing" by the BPF to scare the non-Bodo population and especially Muslims away from BTAD so as to pave the way for a separate Bodoland state. The bloodsheds of 2012 riots is still fresh in the minds of the local populace and victims are forced to live in dilapidated  and inhumane relief camps till today.

 

We the undersigned therefore petition you with the following requests –

1. A Special Investigative Team (SIT) should be formed to investigate this election violence. NIA investigation is not acceptable as this agency only investigates cases related to terrorism and militancy.

2. The BTAD Accord should be revisited. Only 30 percent of the population that is, the Bodos are controlling the rest 70 percent population. In Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) there are 46 Council seats out of which 6 are nominated and 34 reserved for the Bodos and Rabhas.  Only 2 seats are reserved for the rest of the population and 4 seats are open from which even Bodos can contest.. Hence only solution to BTAD problem is equal political representation.

3. In 2003 when Bodoland Liberation Tigers (now BPF) put down arms, they surrendered only10 percent of the arms and ammunition and retained 90 percent of their sophisticated arms. Seizure of illegal arms is must to bring peace back to BTAD.