Mukroh firing reopens old wounds: families seek justice, more active Meghalaya cops at border

Meghalaya and Assam have announced compensation of Rs 5 lakh each.

For Skhem Sten, 43, it was a scene repeating after a two-decade break. In 2002, her brother Dia Sten was among the victims in a firing incident, purportedly by an armed insurgent. On Tuesday, her husband, Thal Shabat, 60, was among the victims — near the same area where Dia was killed.

Skhem says the couple left their hut to work in the paddy field around 7 am on Tuesday when they heard gunshots.(Express Photo)

On Tuesday, Skhem said, they had left home together around 7 am to work in the paddy fields when they suddenly heard gunshots. The couple got separated in the melee. “I hid in the nearby forest. After about half-an-hour, I came out and spotted my husband. He lay dead. Other bodies were also lying around,” she said.

With five children to feed — the youngest, Klemi Sten, is 7 — Skhem said she has no idea how to run the family since her husband was the main provider. “The farmland we work on is not ours — we are wage labourers. My elder son has minimal income as a daily wage worker, and work is not regular,” she said.

On compensation announced by both governments, Skhem said the money will come as a little support but the bigger crisis will continue. Having witnessed many deaths along the state boundary over the years, Skhem rooted for peace “at any cost”, and a Meghalaya Police border outpost (BOP) in the area would be a “good start for that”, she added. Assam has had its BOP in the area for years but Meghalaya has only a scanty team of state police personnel, she pointed out.

Her neighbour Bianda Shadap, 58, who had come to comfort the family, said, “As long as the boundary dispute is pending, we will live in fear.”

Tloda Sumer, 49, whose husband Sik Talang, 53, was killed, said her three daughters and two sons all work in other people’s farms. “We are scared to go to the forest and fields, but we have to go there for sustenance. Violence here is not new. Assam Police personnel beat my husband when he went to till the land last year,” she alleged.

Tloda said she wants the compensation since she has to bring up her grandchildren but demanded justice, and an answer: “Who killed my husband?”

Nitawan Dahar, 33, says her husband Shirup Dahar, 39, went to work in the field and stopped when he saw a gathering, which is when the firing started all of a sudden. (Express Photo)

Like the others, Nitawan Dkhar’s husband Shirup Dkhar, 39, also left home Tuesday morning to work on the field. “He went out and I was later told that he was shot. I don’t know what transpired there but he was surely not there to protest,” said Nitawan, 33.

Her husband, she said, was the family’s sole earner, and now she has to fend for eight children, the youngest three years old. But, Nitawan emphasised, the family does not need any blood money from the “killers”.

Nikhasi Dhar, 60, was among the five killed in police firing. His wife Klan Thawa, 48, was not allowed to see his body at the spot. She saw it hours later at the Civil Hospital in Jowai. Stating that she will accept the compensation, Dhar stressed that the guilty should be brought to book and the families should get justice.

Tal Nartiang, 42, was the fifth villager killed. The family of six remaining members had gone to pray when The Indian Express went to Mukroh. Rilif Nartiang, 39, the victim’s sister who had come from Jowai to be with the bereaved family, said she wants to see the guilty imprisoned for life and punished as per law. She added that she doesn’t want “any money as compensation from the killers”.