GUWAHATI: An eight-year-old spine-chilling mass murder incident has returned to haunt former Assam Congress Minister Akon Bora after two police officers were arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) for alleged destruction of evidence.
A relative of the victims, besides the local MLA and a students’ organisation, on Thursday demanded that Bora be brought under the purview of the probe. The incident took place in 2009 at Jogdal village on the outskirts of Guwahati.
Harakanta Doloi (45), his wife Swapna (40), their three children and their minor nephew were murdered in their sleep. The bodies of two kids were found decapitated. Allegations galore the family was wiped off at the behest of Bora as he wanted to grab Harakanta’s land to build a five-star hotel there.
Harakanta’s brother, Abhajan Doloi, who is a daily wage earner, demanded that all the suspects, including Bora, be grilled.
“The CID must subject the arrested police officers to intense interrogation and use all options available until they spill the beans. The former minister should also be grilled. People say he had a hand in the killings. There has to be some reasons or else why would people implicate him to the incident,” Abhajan Doloi said.
Local MLA Atul Bora of the BJP has for long been fighting to ensure justice to the victims’ family. He said he was confident the CID would get clues from the arrested cops “who know everything”.
“It is unthinkable that an MLA (Akon Bora was then the local MLA) can kill people including kids. I heard he wanted to build a five-star hotel. It was an ideal place. If Harakanta had been approached, he would have possibly sold the land. That way, the lives could have been saved,” Atul Bora said.
In a memorandum submitted to the Chief Secretary last month, he suspected that the murderers, with ulterior motives, had dumped the bodies at a hospital campus to try and implicate its owner and well-known surgeon Dr Dhanirarn Baruah.
He wrote: “The investigations following the crime have been patchy due to political intervention by the former government. No murderer has been booked and no real attempt has been made to bring the perpetrators to trial. I must point out that from all indications, the people of my constituency believe that former minister Akon Bora was involved in the massacre and former Congress Government had all along tried to dislodge the investigation process to safeguard his interests despite open allegations in the media about his involvement…”