A school on the Assam-Mizoram border was damaged in a bomb attack on Friday night, fanning fresh tension in areas caught in a boundary dispute between the two northeastern States.
Officials in Assam said miscreants from Mizoram blew up the Upper Painom Lower Primary School in Assam’s Cachar district.
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This was the second school to have been bombed allegedly by miscreants from Mizoram in more than a fortnight.
“We are trying our best to normalise the situation but the miscreants from Mizoram carried out the blast in the school in a forest area. We are strengthening our forces to avoid such incidents,” Assam’s Home Secretary G.D. Tripathi said after officials in Cachar district inspected the site on Saturday.
He said Central forces beyond a Sashastra Seema Bal contingent were being deployed to maintain security and defuse tension. “We are also in touch with the Mizoram government.”
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Mizoram’s Chief Secretary Lalnunmawia Chuaungo said the State government was monitoring the situation. “We are making all efforts to ensure things do not flare up. The Central forces have arrived and we are in the process of deploying them,” he said.
12-hour shutdown
A local organisation on Saturday called a 12-hour shutdown across the three districts (bordering Mizoram) of southern Assam’s Barak Valley to protest the custodial death of 48-year-old Intiaz Ali Laskar of Cachar’s Lailapur in Mizoram.
The Assam government had said the man, a firewood collector, had been abducted by miscreants from Mizoram. The Mizoram government claimed he was a drug peddler who succumbed to injuries while trying to flee capture by members of a Mizo NGO on November 1.
On the brighter side, truckers’ unions of both the States appealed together to both the governments for “safe passage” for vehicles stranded on either side of the border.
Trouble in the decades-old border dispute began on October 17 when miscreants set some 20 shops and houses ablaze and 50 people were injured in attacks and counter-attacks. The resultant economic blockade against Mizoram imposed by Assam-based organisations was lifted on October 22 before flaring up again on October 28.
Assam’s Forest Minister Parimal Suklabaidya, from Cachar district, had on November 5 claimed Mizoram was occupying 1.5 km of Assam land. Mizos say “illegal migrants” from Assam have occupied 10 km land from the border.
