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Pramila Brahma�s arrest demanded

By Spl CORRESPONDENT

NEW DELHI, May 6 � After State Minister Siddique Ahmed, it is now BPF legislator Pramila Rani Brahma�s turn to face the wrath of civil society groups, which have called for her immediate arrest.

Civil society groups and social activists, besides NGOs, while condemning the massacre of Muslims in Assam in their nine-point charter of demands, have called for immediate arrest of Pramila Rani Brahma and demanded strong measures to ensure safety of Muslims in the BTAD areas.

In a joint statement, several members of the civil society demanded constitution of an SIT headed by a serving IPS officer or a Supreme Court Judge. �The state police and other security forces deployed in BTAD, which have miserably failed to provide security to non-Bodos and Muslims, cannot be relied upon to fairly investigate this,� they said.

The signatories included Ram Puniyani, activist and writer, Mumbai, Harsh Mander, Aman Biradari, Lesley Esteves, queer activist, Rituparna Borah, queer feminist activist, Bonojit Hussain, research scholar, Delhi Shohini Ghosh, filmmaker and academic Manohar Elevarthi.

Yesterday, the AICC had reacted strongly over the statement of a Congress leader about the consequences of not voting for a particular party.

�What has happened in Assam is a condemnable incident and I think every Indian has been put to shame. Do not say that such a situation arrived in the event of not voting for a particular party. This is an inflammatory and provocative statement... I don�t agree with this,� senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi said.

�Whosoever has said it, may be Tarun Gogoi, I believe he can�t say this. I will not hesitate in saying that it�s not a decent statement. It is untrue, and it is an unfortunate incident where much politics has been played by many political parties and are still playing. But I do not want to get into this and get provoked,� he said.

Meanwhile, the civil society groups claimed that the immediate provocation for the May 2 killings seem to have come from the communal statement made by Pramila Rani Brahma, a former Agricultural Minister, who accused the Muslims of not voting for the BPF candidate Chandan Brahma. She demanded that the BPF should therefore support the BJP. Immediately after her statement, separate incidents of violence broke out, they claimed.

State Minister Siddique Ahmed, who had visited the violence-affected area of BTAD, has concluded that the members of BPF were involved in the massacre and also demanded the arrest of Pramila Rani Brahma. It has also come to light that guns provided to forest officials have been used in the massacre, thus directing suspicion towards Khampa Borgoyary, deputy chief of BTC and executive member of the Forest Department of BTC, the groups alleged.

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