Bru leaders seek security citing threat over CAA-related violence in Tripura

Leaders representing nearly 34,000 displaced people belonging to the Bru community living in Tripura have sought deployment of central forces for their safety citing threat issued by two local organisations for allegedly supporting the anti-CAA agitation.

In a letter to Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb, at least 12 Bru leaders said that they received information that members of Kanchanpur Nagarik Suraksha Mancha and Mizo Convention were planning "dire consequences" to the efforts to permanently settle the displaced Brus in Kanchanpur sub-division alleging that they were involved in vandalism and arson during the anti-CAA agitation in January in which many local Bengali people were injured or displaced.

They said the two organisations are opposed to the resettlement of the Brus in Kanchanpur sub-division of Tripura if the Bengali and Mizo displaced people were not covered under the Rs 600 crore rehabilitation package announced by the Centre in January.

It decided to permanently settle the Brus, who left their homes in Mizoram in 1997 following an ethnic conflict and had taken shelter mainly in Kanchanpur in Tripura.

The agreement was signed on January 16 days after parts of Tripura and rest of the Northeast roared in protest against CAA.

People belonging to the indigenous communities fear that CAA would endanger their ethnic identity by giving citizenship to a large number of Hindu Bengali migrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.

Brus are opposed to CAA while the majority Bengalis in Tripura are in favour of the amendment.

"The allegations about the involvement of the Bru displaced people in the violence against the CAA is completely false and unfounded propaganda just to create communal enmity in Tripura. We also do not have any information about the internal displacement of Bengali and Mizo people in Tripura," said the letter.

The leaders sought deployment of central forces to avoid any untoward incident during the process to rehabilitate the displaced Brus.

They also demanded that leaders of the displaced Brus be included in the state, district and sub-division level task force/resettlement committees for proper rehabilitation of the displaced people.