10,000 Bodos and Adivasis from 35 villages displaced
The terror attacks by the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit) on Adivasi villages on the night of December 23 have triggered a humanitarian crisis, displacing over 10,000 Bodos and Adivasi forest dwellers from 35 villages within an eight-km radius from this settlement in Kokrajhar district for the third time.
After being displaced during ethnic clashes between the Bodos and the Adivasis in 1996 and 1998, most of them started rebuilding their lives only about eight years ago.
The border settlement, with Bodo, Adivasi and Nepalese populations, is about 65 km from Kokrajhar town, the headquarters of the Bodoland Territorial Council. The number of people in the relief camps continues to swell as panic gripped inhabitants of the Ultapani reserve forests, who do not possess land rights.
On Sunday, scores of people were seen flocking to the relief camps, leaving behind their granaries full of paddy harvested just before the trouble broke out and taking along whatever little belongings — utensils, solar plates, buckets, clothes and so on — they could carry on their bicycles and pull carts or in their hands.
The 39-km road connecting the National Highway passing through Kokrajhar district with this small border settlement and those of Bodo and Adivasi forest dwellers on patches inside the reserve forests under the Haltugaon forest division on both sides of the road wore a deserted look.
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