GUWAHATI: Forty-two years after the Nellie Massacre in Assam, the state government has decided to table the Tribhubhan Prasad Tiwari Commission Report in the Assembly in November.
An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 Muslims, mostly women and children, were killed in the massacre which took place in 1983 during the height of the Assam Agitation, also known as the anti-foreigners’ agitation.
Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said that as copies of the report did not have Tiwary’s signature, successive governments were “on the backstage” as they were not sure if the report was genuine or fake.
“We have interviewed the clerks and the secretaries who were involved in the preparation of the report, followed by a forensic test. We came to know that the report is genuine,” Sarma said.
“There was a need to take a bold step. We thought we should table it in the Assembly since it is a part of Assam’s history,” the chief minister said.
Stating that social scientists and historians had presented the report in various ways, he said people would get to know the facts – what happened at that time – following the publication of the report.
The violence allegedly raged through the night across Muslim villages at Nellie, which was then in Nagaon district.
In the aftermath of the massacre, the then state government had constituted the Tiwari Commission to investigate the causes and circumstances of the tragedy, considered one of the darkest chapters in Assam’s history.