E-Paper
Firing stokes Assam-Mizoram tension
Assam Police claimed that they tried to intercept some unidentified Mizoram residents trying to cross the border and retaliated after being fired on. Assam didn’t clarify whether local residents or Mizoram Police fired the first shots.
Gunshots rang out at the Assam-Mizoram border on Tuesday, ratcheting up interstate tensions mere weeks after both the governments announced a road map for peaceful negotiations following a violent showdown last month.
Police officials from both states said the firing occurred around 2am on Tuesday in the reserve forests of the Darashing Hills area on the Assam side.
One person from Mizoram sustained injuries, but not due to the firing, Mizoram Police said.
Assam Police claimed that they tried to intercept some unidentified Mizoram residents trying to cross the border and retaliated after being fired on. Assam didn’t clarify whether local residents or Mizoram Police fired the first shots.
Mizoram Police said some locals were going to their friends’ house on the Assam side when they were threatened by Assam’s force. Mizoram said it didn’t fire shots.
On July 26, police forces of the two states fought a pitched gun battle at the disputed border, killing six Assam policemen and injuring about 40 others. Tuesday’s firing happened in a different section of the border.
Assam districts of Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi share a 164.6km-long border with Mizoram’s Aizawl, Kolasib and Mamit districts. The decades-old border dispute stems primarily from a difference in perception. Mizoram goes by an 1875 border agreement but Assam follows a 1933 demarcation.
Tensions abated in the first week of August after central intervention. The two states held a peace summit and agreed to withdraw state forces from the border, allow central inspection and initiate talks. But Tuesday’s violence showed that state police forces continued to patrol the border and indicated that decades-old tensions simmered despite the frenetic negotiation efforts.
Superintendent of police of Assam’s Hailakandi district, Gaurav Upadhyay, said at around 2 am on Tuesday, police officials noticed some people trying to enter Assam and using “some sort of signal" with torch lights.
He said Assam Police officials attempted to confront and question them but received gunfire from the upper side of the hill on the Mizoram side. In return, Assam Police fired 12 rounds of blank shots which forced the people to flee.
“First of all, we did not start the firing; our officials were attacked with bullets from upper side of the hill which is under Mizoram. Ordinary civilians do not cross the border silently at 2am, so it appears these people were up to something fishy. Our officials did not fire on them first as we have been instructed not to do it. Some wrong messages are being given from the Mizoram’s side which should not be done,” Upadhyay said.
He also said that the area where these three people were stopped came under Assam and was not a disputed part of the border. “If this was a disputed area, higher officials would have intervened by now,” he added.
Superintendent of police of Mizoram’s Kolasib district, Vanlalfaka Ralte, said: “In bordering areas, people are friends with each other and they exchange things amongst them. This is unfortunate that Assam Police tried to use bullets on innocent civilians of Mizoram.”
