Army silent on Guwahati shootout involving jawans

GUWAHATI, OCT 24: Friday was to be the day when militants belonging to the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) were to b...

GUWAHATI, OCT 24: Friday was to be the day when militants belonging to the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) were to begin targeting railway trains and property to register protest against “atrocities” on their colleagues by the Army and security personnel. The threat never materialised, but the Army has still ended up in the hot spot.

When the first news of a shootout came that day from the Guwahati railway station, everyone initially assumed it was the work of Bodo rebels. However, it later turned out that both the attackers and the attacked were Army jawans, who were incidentally supposed to prevent the Bodo rebels from getting close to Railway property.

Five days later, the Army is yet to come out with any kind of statement on the incident, which had led to the death of four Army jawans and a civilian and left as many as nine injured. Among the injured too are three Army personnel. No one in the Army is even willing to talk about the incident.

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Guwahati Superintendent of Police G.P. Singh has a version, claiming it to be that of the Army, that the incident took place when a “mentally-deranged” jawan snatched a rifle from one of his four colleagues escorting him and began firing indiscriminately at them. According to Singh, the “mentally-deranged” jawan was Naik Subedar Tarachand of 6 Jat Regiment, who was being taken from Rangapara near Tezpur to Tinsukhia, aboard the Guwahati-Dibrugarh Inter-City Express on Friday evening. The SP adds that the Army says they had to shoot down Tarachand to stop him and save the lives of the public.

The dead included Naiks Joginder Singh and Kulbir Singh (both of the 6 Jat Regiment), B.P. Rai of 17 Assam Rifles Battalion, civilian Badal Das, as well as Tarachand, who was the last to die.

However, interestingly, a Government Railway Police (GRP) officer at the Guwahati railway station, K.K. Nath, has stated that four AK-47 rifles were recovered from the coach of a stationary train after the incident, of which the magazine of only one was full. According to Nath, altogether 54 rounds had been fired from the other three rifles.

But there is another version of the story, related by a city police officer who was among the first to reach the spot. According to this officer, the incident followed a quarrel involving five jawans of the 6 Jat Regiment, including Tarachand, who were travelling together to Tinsukhia after a training course in Tezpur, where the headquarters of the Army’s 4 Corps is located.

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Interestingly, the post-mortem examination of the bodies of the four dead jawans has reportedly revealed that they had consumed alcohol prior to the incident. The doctors have refused to reveal further.

The Kamrup deputy commissioner has instituted a magisterial inquiry into the incident, giving Additional Deputy Commissioner S.K. Roy 15 days to complete the task. The Army has also announced its own probe into the shootout. But the police haven’t been able to go far with the investigations as the jawans injured in the shootout are undergoing treatment at an Army base hospital.