Clash over land leaves 13 injured at Tripura-Mizoram border
Tripura Police said there was tension between the two communities over possession of the land since the past 15 days which ended in a clash on Monday leaving 13 injured.
A clash over a plot of land between two different communities left at least 13 injured at Damcherra in North district of Tripura, said police on Tuesday. Damcherra is Tripura’s last village before the inter-state boundary with Mizoram.
Of the injured persons, seven are from the Bru community while the rest are from the Halam community. This is likely to be the first noteworthy incident of violence involving the Brus since the process to settle around 30,000 members of the community in Tripura started earlier this year in April, when about 1,600 Bru families were permanently settled in Dhalai and North Tripura districts.
Halam communities of Tripura belong to the Kuki-Chin tribes of Tibeto-Burmese ethnic group.
“We took a suo moto case. No one has been arrested so far. We have imposed Section 144 in the area for an indefinite period,” said superintendent of police (SP) of North district Bhanupada Chakraborty.
Police said there was tension between the two communities over possession of the land since the past 15 days which ended in a clash on Monday leaving 13 injured. Two among the injured Brus were admitted to a hospital in Dharmanagar with serious head injuries.
A quadripartite agreement signed between the Centre, Tripura and Mizoram governments and Bru leaders in January last year allowed over 32,000 Brus permanent resettlement in Tripura. The Centre also announced a ₹600 crore package for resettlement of the migrants in clusters.
The decision led to several protests by a few local organisations against their permanent settlement. Two persons including a fireman were killed and 20 others injured during the anti-Bru settlement protests last year.
The Brus came to the state in 1997 to escape an ethnic clash in Mizoram and started staying at six relief camps in the North District. Nearly 5000 Bru families have been repatriated since 2009 in the ninth phase of repatriation.
Expressing deep concern over the issue, CPM demanded that the state government take measures to restore peace and normalise the situation in the affected area.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Nabendu Bhattacharjee said the party suspected “a conspiracy” behind the incident. “We believe that police will investigate the matter and take proper action,” Bhattacharjee said.