Pyres had turned to cinders after the massacre but the people of Bishonimukh Kherbari village in Dhola of upper Assam’s Tinsukia district are yet to overcome the trauma and passing sleepless nights after five persons of their village were gunned down by suspected ULFA (I) militant on Thursday evening.
Three hundred Bengali Hindu families are living in the village for past several years. Agriculture is the mainstay for their survival and most of the people of the village involved themselves in farming.
Sumoti Das (15) has been in a trauma when she heard that her father Subol Das (50) was gunned down along with four other people of their village. She has been studying at Saikhowa Higher Secondary school in 9th standard.
“My father always encouraged me in studies and told me to become good human being. Why they killed my father? He has done no harm to anyone. He is the only bread earner in our family now who will take cares of our family,” while saying tears rolled down her cheeks. Subol is survived by his wife and six daughters, three of them were married.
The family of Subol Das was shocked and don’t know how they will survive.
Sunil Das, elder brother of Subol Das said, “We have been living in this village for many years but such incident never happened in our village. Earlier we used do fishing to run our family but after massive flood we have changed our profession to farming. Most of the people in our village are engaged in farming for their survival. We don’t know who have done this but the culprits should be punished.”
He said that after the incident they had informed the Dhola police outpost but they reached lately.
The lone survivor Sahdev Namasudra (20) narrated the whole incident how the unidentified gunmen came to their village and asked them to come with them.
“We were at Ananta’s shop for adda (chit chat). Abinash, his elder brother, was also present with his two year old daughter. We were chatting when three men in army fatigues arrived carrying arms and they faces were covered with black mask they called us and told Abinash to leave the child with the mother. We accompanied them. As we walked, we saw three more persons, Anant’s uncle Shyamal Biswas, Subol Das and Dhananjoy Namasudra already on the road. They then took our cell phones and started firing at us, I fell down unconscious and after one minute later, I regained consciousness and saw the bodies lying in a pool of blood. I shouted and called other villagers for help,” he said.