Murder of SSB men: Motive not yet clear

Dutt added that the IG of SSB had already flown down from New Delhi to Udalguri to take stock of the situation. The SSB personnel were abducted from a village under the Rowta police station in the newly created Udalguri district adjoining Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh on May 21.

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said that though the needle of suspicion for the incident was being pointed at the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), no concrete evidence had been found to sustain the belief.

The NDFB, however, has vehemently denied reports that it had a hand in the incident.

But the Union Home Ministry has reports that it was the NDFB whose cadres were involved in the abduction and murder. The incident has occurred at a time when Assam Governor Ajai Singh has claimed that law and order in Assam has seen a remarkable improvement. ‘‘Due to the relentless efforts made in the last five years, Assam is today witnessing a remarkable improvement in the law and order situation,’’ Singh said while addressing the first session of the 12th Assam Legislative Assembly here today.

The SSB, which was recently reorganised as a Border Guarding Force and entrusted with the task of guarding the Indo-Nepal and the Indo-Bhutan boundaries, was created in 1963 in the wake of aggression by China, to build people’s morale and inculcate a spirit of resistance in the border population against threats of subversion, infiltration and sabotage from across the border.