A man was killed and ten others injured in a clash between a mob of angry tea workers and a group of agitators protesting against the killing of an innocent by the security-personnel in eastern Assam’s Tinsukia district on Sunday.
The authorities clamped curfew in parts of the district soon after the skirmish. “We are keeping a tab on the situation and additional police and paramilitary forces are being sent to pre-empt any fresh flare up,” said Himanta Bishwa Sharma, a minister and spokesman of the State’s Congress-led coalition Government.
The local villagers of Doomdooma and adjoining areas in Tinsukia have been staging a blockade on the National Highway 37 since May 6 last. They were protesting against the killing of Buddheshwar Moran, a tea garden worker, by the soldiers of the Indian Army’s 6 J&K Rifles in an encounter, which took place in a nearby village.
The Army later admitted that the 24-year-old innocent had been mistaken for an ULFA militant. It apologised for the ‘unfortunate incident’ and promised compensation to the bereaved family of the slain man.
The GOC of the Army’s 2 Mountain Division Maj. Gen. N C Marwah said  a court of inquiry had already been instituted to probe into the incident and the guilty personnel would not be spared.
But the Army’s apology  failed to pacify the agitators, who carried on the road-blockade — bringing vehicular traffic to a halt and disrupting supply of essentials to parts of eastern Assam and neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh. The protesters were led by a local students’ body and People’s Committee for Peace Initiative in Assam (PCPIA) — an organisation that has been demanding peace-talks between the Union Government and ULFA. The road-blockade also created a crisis of food and other essentials in the nearby tea gardens. This apparently angered the plantation workers, who attacked the protesters on Sunday.
“The police and paramilitary forces resorted to cane-charge and even fired in the air to disperse mutually skirmishing mobs,” said a police officer from Tinsukia.