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High security on Indo-Bangla border in Assam

Fearing possible infiltration by North-east based Islamic militants who have received training in neighbouring Bangladesh, the Cachar district administration in South Assam has clamped a two-month embargo on people\\'s movement, and trade, along the Indo-Bangla border. The local administration has clamped Section 144 of the CrPC restricting the movement of people in the area between 8 pm and 5 am. The ban includes fishing boats which will now be prevented from plying in the Surma river during the stipulated hours.

Manipur mourns little Elizabeth

Thousands of people gathered at the Don Bosco School grounds here in Imphal today to bid farewell to Minister for General Administration and Elections Francis Ngajokpa\\'s daughter, eight-year-old Lungnila Elizabeth, whose decomposed body was recovered yesterday, after she was kidnapped on November 4 from outside her school. A few arrests had meanwhile been made in connection with the murder, sources said, even as the state government announced that the case would be cracked within a couple of days. Details of those reportedly arrested were, however, not immediately known.

One shot dead in Assam; attacks on Biharis rise

A Bihari businessman, identified as Vijayraj Tatre, was shot dead by suspected ULFA militants, sources here said, while a worker in a tailor\\'s shop in Doomdooma in Upper Assam was injured in a grenade attack in what is believed to be part of the retaliatory strikes against the Bihari community in the state for the violence meted out recently to train passengers of the North-east in Bihar. Tatre\\'s son and the Bihari tailor also sustained injuries in the two attacks.

Two killed in Assam; violence continues

Two persons were killed in the state in the past 12 hours, even as the army conducted flag marches in Tinsukia and Duliajan in Upper Assam to bring under control the continuing violence between the Assamese and Bihari communities. Speaking to newspersons, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said here today that deputy commissioners, along with superintendents of police, would be held responsible and action taken against them should there be reports of further violence from the districts.

Assam riot toll rises to 27; two ULFA ultras killed

Twenty more persons of the Bihari community were killed in violent incidents reported from the various parts of the state, bringing the death toll in the ongoing clash between the Assamese and Bihari communities to 27 this evening. According to reports received here late tonight from lower Assam, two Bihari persons were gunned down by suspected United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) militants in Nalbari, while three others were killed in Fakiragram. Six members of a Bihari family were meanwhile killed in Tingkhong in upper Assam.

3 more die in Assam; curfew in 14 towns, Death toll 41

Two Bihari persons and a two-year old child who were injured in the ongoing clashes between the Assamese and Bihari communities in the state succumbed to their injuries late last night in Bongaigaon. There was, however, no report of loss of lives from any part of the state in the past 20 hours or so till the filing of this report. With the deaths last night in Bongaigaon, the toll in the present clashes mounted to 41. Bihari passengers of the Brahmaputra mail was attacked in Gaghrapar in lower Assam last night, though the figures people injured in the incident were not available.

The hungry among the dead

The refrain is similar among most domiciled Biharis in the state. In Guwahati alone their population would exceed a lakh. As an employee of the more bankrupt Public Health Engineering Department (PHE) at Chandmari on the busy RG Barooah Road, Yadav is part of Assam's oversized government workforce, that has for years now, got paid in installments, once in every three months, when they're lucky. Assam's government school teachers at one stage didn't get paid for years at a stretch.

A Job is a Job is a Job …

The Union Ministry for Railways headed by Nitish Kumar could not, for example, have had just national interest in mind when it sent a few train loads of Biharis from Bihar to Assam. Not to a state, the capital of which alone has an estimated 1.5 lakh Biharis, who eke out a living as construction workers, rickshaw pullers, porters and the like, not the best of professions. Not when Tinsukia, Assam and the entire North-east's main mandi for all purposes, is dominated by lakhs of domiciled, third-generation Biharis many of whom form a part of the state's unemployed.

ULFA Extortion Drive in Tea Belt

Long known to target the tea industry for their financial requirements, the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) has, in a sudden upsurge, issued extortion notices to at least two major tea companies in the state. Close on the heels of the notice reportedly issued to Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL) last month, a second tea major, Warren Tea Limited in the Tinsukia district of Upper Assam, has said that it received a Rs 25 lakh demand notice from the outfit recently.

Humiliated nation

Peoples of Assam are screened, assaulted and the women are molested by the Indians in Bihar state without any provocation. It was later on stated by a Hindi vernacular daily that Bihari candidates were debarred from appearing an interview conducted by Guwahati Chapter of Indian Railway Board. It was a false and fabricated story and so had escaped the eyes of all news media even the Indian oriented ones.

Bangladesh launches operation against NE ultras

According to highly placed intelligence sources, while Dhaka has so far remained tight-lipped about the recent developments, the operation against the Indian militants has been on since last week. There are a number of camps of the ULFA, along with those of the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT) and the Kamatapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) in Bangladesh. The government of Bangladesh, according to the sources was contemplating such a move for a while now to restore peace on its "eastern front".

North-east Saath Hamare

Sahara TV's programme of the above name, for all its effort, is not without its tell-tale errors: fresh young journalists often parachuted, for all purposes, into an alien North-east, where he reports on the hot "jolokia mirch" of Assam (jolokia, incidentally, is mirch in Assamese), and how Guru Tegh Bahadur converted the first Sikhs in Assam during the time of King Ahom (in reality, the Ahoms were the dynasty that ruled the region between 1228 and 1826, the word Oxom, the Anglicised version of which is Assam, is, according to one school of thought, derived from 'Ahom'); the Ahom king referred

Last round of talks with Indian militants before we strike: Bhutan

Having held four rounds of talks with the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) leaders, including its self-styled commander in chief, Paresh Baruah, and chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa in Thimphu, the Bhutanese Government “will consider the fifth as the last and final before moving in its army”, should the negotiations fail, Bhutanese Prime Minister Jigme Yoezer Thinley has said. The fifth round of talks are to be held “soon” in an undisclosed destination in Bhutan.