In Assam, eviction flare-up leaves mother of 2 dead: ‘What was the need to shoot?’

While the eviction itself had been peaceful – most people left before the bulldozers arrived – five months later, the area has now witnessed violence.

The forest department claims those who had been evicted in February were trying to resettle there. On Monday, a forest department team led by Divisional Forest Officer of Nagaon Wildlife, Jayanta Deka, arrived at the site and confrontation between the two sides escalated. While a forester and two home guards sustained injuries, Khatun was killed in “retaliatory firing”. Three of her relatives were injured.

The 40-year-old leaves behind her husband Samser Ali – who also suffered a gunshot wound and was hospitalised – and her two children. Ever since the eviction, along with other evicted families, Khatun’s family had been living a few hundred metres away in kutcha houses. On Sunday, they had put up the tarpaulin structure at the spot where their house had been demolished.

According to her niece Farida Khatun, seven members of the family had taken their sheep and cows there that evening because the water level had risen due to rains and reached their cowshed.

However, forest department officials have called this setting up of tarpaulin tents a “tactic” to lay claim on the land again, and said there have been multiple attempts to resettle there since the eviction.