Dispute over the eviction in Assam kills the mother of two. Although the actual eviction was peaceful, the majority of occupants were left behind the bulldozers and the violence had hit the state after five months.
Six sticks of bamboo, some tarps and a little tin sheet fell down and a tragic incident took place in Assam. Violence broke out over the buildings and other structures in the location of Assam’s Bura Chapori Wildlife Sanctuary on Monday, which has resulted in the death of a woman named Rahima Khatun and six other people including 3 forest rangers also got injured during this incident.
To Reach the site from the nearest village, it requires rowing across two water bodies in a reserve forest in the wetlands and grassland area of Sonitpur district. It was in February, at the center of an intensive eviction operation where 1,282 hectares of land were cleared by the Forest service and more than 2,000 people had established their dwellings, which made this charming location come to light.
According to the Forest Service, those who were evacuated in February had been trying to relocate from there. A team from the Forestry Department, headed by Divisional Forest Officer of Nagaon Wildlife Jayanta Deka had come to the forest site on Monday and started fighting between the escalated sides of the forest. While two home guards and a forester got injured, Khatun was dead because of retaliatory firing and three of her relatives were also injured.
The 40-year-old’s husband Samser Ali, who also sustained a gunshot wound was hospitalized along with the two children. Khatun and his family had been living in kutcha homes along with several other evicted families, a hundred yards away since the evictions. They had erected the tarpaulin structure on the site from their destroyed house on Sunday. ‘Seven family members sent their sheep and cows in the evening because the water level had increased owing to storms and reached their cowshed’, said Farida Khatun’s niece.
However, the officials of the Forest Department said that the tarps tents set up is a tactic to claim the land again and there had been several attempts by the forest department to resettle this since the eviction.
