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Uneasy calm along Assam-Meghalaya border

By Correspondent

Diphu, Aug 27: Assam-Meghalaya border in-between West Karbi Anglong Autonomous district of Assam and Ri Bhoi district of Meghalaya have remained an undecided borderline between the two states.

Low intensity conflict between the administration and general people, this has become the order of the day.

Few days back after similar occurrences a bureaucratic level meeting was held between the civil and police officers of both the states, where in-principle it was decided that no developmental works will be taken up by authorities of both states and harmony will be maintained. However the accord proved to be short-lived last Tuesday.

According to West Karbi Anglong police, a crowd of around two hundred people from Umlaper, Ummat and Pdengtleit village of Ri Bhoi district of Meghalaya crossed over to Assam side and destroyed a temporary Assam police camp on the pretext of pestering three Meghalaya youths by Assam police personals.

Conflicts blow up between Assam Police personnel and residents of three villages under the Mawhati constituency of Ri Bhoi district at Umlaper village of Assam, along the Meghalaya-Assam border. Luckily no one received any injury in the divergence.

Meghalaya residents have to say that the incident happened for the reason that, news of police personnel allegedly thrashing three local youth at a check gate on Monday evening disseminated in the area.

Resulting in attack by Meghalaya residents, they destroyed the police gate, which they claimed to be established without authorisation inside their state just to extract money from the people.

The Member of District Council of Mawhati (Ri Bhoi district), Charles Marngar, has claimed the gate was illegal. He said that the current talks on the border issue between both states required removal of security forces and central forces have already with-drown from that place but Assam Police personnel have remained stationed there.

Meanwhile, an official from the Assam police informed that the gate was set up to keep a check on smuggling activities in the area after complaints of cattle theft were received along the interstate boundary.

Ri Bhoi Superintendent of Police, Nazarius Lamare informed that following the intervention of officials from both states, the Assam police have agreed to remove the gate and withdraw their forces from the area.

After the incident Superintendent of Police West Karbi Anglong district and his Ri Bhoi counterpart controlled the situation but the Meghalaya citizens claimed that the whole border locality belongs to their state.

At the end of the day Assam Police removed its temporary camp from the disputed area to Ulukunchi village around forty kilometers from the forward area and unpredictably Meghalaya police secured their position in that place.

After the incident people of the locality did express disgruntlement over the encroachment of their land by their neighbours.

As anticipated by the Umlaper villagers of Assam, yesterday around three hundred people from Meghalaya stormed in that tiny village in a convoy of assorted vehicles with an intention of creating commotion.

The aggressive intrusions of the Meghalaya citizens this time was met with steep resistance by the people of Assam, local Karbi, Nepali and other communities began pushing back the trespassers, to control the situation a contingent of Assam police rushed to the place of incident and took control of the situation.

A major communal violence could be averted due to the sensible intervention of Assam police. As of now the situation is under control and no reports of any violence have come in till filling of this report.

Assam Police is maintaining round the clock vigilance in the entire border area to ward off any misadventure of neighbouring states. Uneasy calm is prevailing in the whole area.

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