GUWAHATI: Eleven people were killed when a barrage of gunshots, fired by policemen in the air to scare off an irate mob, snapped a high voltage live electric wire which fell on the victims at Pengeri in Assam’s Tinsukia district on Monday.District officials said the victims were killed on the spot. Over a dozen others were injured.
The incident occurred when a mob attacked a police station in connection with the murder of a woman and her daughter-in-law on April 6. Three members of the woman’s family were abducted by a gang of five miscreants. Later, the bodies of the two women were recovered from a field.
Enraged locals armed with stones, lathis, machetes and other weapons, attacked the police station. Police retaliated with lathis before firing blanks.
The shots snapped a high voltage electric wire which fell on the victims.