GUWAHATI: A special court of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Saturday awarded death penalty to two insurgents of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) in connection with the December 2014 massacre of Adivasis (tea garden community) in some places of northern Assam.
Bishnu Narzary alias N Berama and Ajoy Basumatary alias Buhum were awarded death sentence. Two others, Nitul Daimary alias D Naihab and Sanju Bordoloi alias Sibigiri, were awarded life imprisonment.
The NIA, which probed the mayhem, had earlier registered a case under various Sections of IPC and Arms Act. The charge-sheet in the case was filed by the NIA in July 2015.
The quartet was implicated in one of the several attacks on the Adivasis. They had allegedly fired indiscriminately on the locals at Santipur village in Sonitpur district in which six people were killed and several others were injured.
At least 81 people were killed in Kokrajhar, Sonitpur, and Chirang districts by the heavily-armed militants of Songbijit faction of NDFB. In the aftermath of the massacre, Union Home Minister Rajnath had handed the cases to the NIA. At the same time, he had instructed the security forces to launch an all-out attack against the militants.
The subsequent operations by the security forces had virtually broken the backbone of the outfit. Over 150 of the militants were either killed or apprehended by the police and security forces.
Many of the militants, including NDFB chief Songbijit, had fled to Myanmar. He floated an outfit there and is now leading it as its chief.
A small group of the insurgents, led by the outfit’s military chief G Bidai, is holed up in the jungles of Bhutan. The security forces have been going after this group for long but have not got any success. There were occasions when the forces came very close to Bidai but he managed to escape.