Assam: Police kill at least 10 during protest against Indian Army murder

Ajit Mahanta, a 30-year-old day-labourer with two young children, Satyajit (4) and Dharmendra (2), was picked up by soldiers on February 4 at his home in Tirak village, reputedly because he was suspected of belonging to the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), a banned insurgent group. The ULFA, emerged out of an exclusivist agitation mounted by the All-Assam Student Union (AASU) against Bangladeshi immigrant workers during the late seventies and early eighties. It claims to be waging a “national liberation struggle” of the Assamese against “colonial rulers” in New Delhi.

According to the Telegraph, a Calcutta daily, Mahanta’s body was dumped by army personnel at the casualty ward in the Assam Medical College Hospital in Dibrugarh around 2 am February 5.

The Army initially claimed that Mahanta died after sustaining fatal injuries from a fall while trying to escape. This feeble excuse was contradicted by a police official who was quoted by the Telegraph as saying, “If he (Mahanta) died in the way the army has described, why didn’t the troops hand over the body to the police, which is the established procedure in counter-insurgency operations? The army is getting itself into deep trouble by trying to cook up a flimsy story.” According to the post-mortem report, Mahanta died of profuse internal bleeding.

Two days later thousands of angry people from the surrounding villages gathered in Kakopathar and rose up in protest against the army, which has the power to shoot and kill at its discretion while carrying out counter-insurgency operations. The villagers blockaded a major national highway, demanded that the responsible army personnel be handed over to them for trial, and refused to budge despite a large and armed contingent of security forces. The utter hatred the people feel towards an army that has killed thousands of people under the pretext of fighting insurgencies, was reflected in slogans such as “Indian army go back” and “Indian army are secret killers.” The villagers pointed out that Ajit Mahanta was an innocent man with no police record.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/assa-f20.shtml