Assam: TMC team from West Bengal visits Assam’s carnage site
A four-member delegation of lawmakers from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Sunday visited Kherbari-Bisonibari village in Assam's Dhola where five people, all Bengalis, were gunned down by unidentified gunmen.
The TMC team, comprising MPs Derek O' Brien, Mamata Bala Thakur, Nadimul Haq and MLA Mahua Moitra, spent over an hour with the bereaved families before travelling back to Dibrugarh to catch a flight to Kolkata.
O' Brien told reporters it was a humanitarian visit to stand by the grieving families.
"What has happened is dastardly. We have come to be by the side of the bereaved families and give them all support. Some poor Bengalis, who were Hindus, were called out of their homes and shot dead in cold blood. We cannot accept this," O' Brien said.
Moitra said the nine crore people of West Bengal were by the side of the affected families.
"Just as people from other states are living peacefully in West Bengal, we also expect migrants in Assam to live in peace. The incident in which five people were picked up and killed shouldn't have happened," she said.
Without naming the BJP or Prime Minister Narendra Modi, she alleged that that the country had been in the grip of a "toxic atmosphere" since 2014.
"There has been an increasing division among people in the country since 2014. People are being divided on the lines of religion. Just because you speak a language that is different from mine, you might be seen as different. If your religion is different from mine, you might be seen as different. The killings are a result of this mentality and divisive agenda," Moitra said.
The incident took place in the evening of Thursday when masked gunmen on motorcycles called out the people, took them to a place under a bridge and fired a barrage of shots.