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The president of All Bodoland Minority Students’ Union (ABMSU) and a popular minority leader in Kokrajhar, Lakiful Islam, was gunned down Tuesday afternoon by unidentified assailants who police said could be known to him. Islam was shot from point blank range inside a hardware store at Titaguri, about 3 km from Kokrajhar town, at around 4.30 pm. He had stopped there while returning from an ABMSU meeting in a nearby town.
“The two assailants came on a bike and fled after shooting him. Eyewitnesses said both wore helmets covering their face. We have launched a manhunt for the assailants,” SP Rajen Singh said. Islam, who founded the ABMSU after the government created the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) in 2003, was instrumental in building up a movement to protect the rights of migrant Muslims in the four Bodoland districts. He had taken over as the ABMSU president in 2016 after functioning as the general secretary for the past few years,.
The ABMSU has threatened to call an indefinite bandh in the Bodoland districts if police fail to track down the culprits. Leaders cutting across party lines have condemned the murder. Late on Tuesday evening, Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal held a high level-meeting with senior officials from police and administration in Guwahati and asked police to nab the culprits at the earliest. The CM asked Kokrajhar officials to ensure that peace prevails and told Assam Police Director General Mukesh Sahay to rush to the district.
In Delhi, All India United Democratic Front chief and Dhubri MP Maulana Badruddin Ajmal demanded a high-level inquiry into the incident.
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