Was Bodo Sahitya Sabha chief killed for favouring Devanagari script?

GUWAHATI, AUG 21: Was Bineswar Brahma, president of Bodo Sahitya Sabha, and a leading light of the Bodo literary world, murdered because h...

GUWAHATI, AUG 21: Was Bineswar Brahma, president of Bodo Sahitya Sabha, and a leading light of the Bodo literary world, murdered because he had favoured adoption of the Devanagari script for his mother-tongue? If the Bodo Liberation Tigers (BLT) is to be believed, then Brahma was shot for that reason, with the culprits belonging to the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), the other Bodo armed group.

BLT publicity secretary Mainao Daimary has, in a statement, accused the NDFB for gunning down Brahma because he was playing a leading role in making Devanagari the script for the Bodo language, to which the NDFB was allegedly opposed.

Assam Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta too has pointed at the NDFB was behind Brahma’s murder, which has been also endorsed by the Assam Police director-general P V Sumant. The police chief too has said that Brahma was targeted because of his favouring Devanagari as the script for the Bodo language.

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Chief Minister Mahanta, on the other hand, has said that the NDFB had chosen to kill Brahma because the latter was playing a major role in bringing back peace on the Bodo front, which the militant group did not want to happen.

Bramha was brutally shot on Saturday by four youths, who arrived in his residence here, and had a heated argument over some issue. As many as fourteen bullets of AK-47 rifles were pumped on his body, killing him on the spot.

Interestingly, Brahma had just returned from the Raj Bhavan after holding a hour-long discussion with Governor S K Sinha on the current Bodo situation. Earlier during the day, Brahma had also met Chief Minister Mahanta and had discussed the Government’s efforts to find a solution to the vexed Bodo problem.

Meanwhile, reports from Brahma’s home-district, quoting his brother Buddheswar Brahma said that the Bodo Sahitya Sabha chief and his family-members were under regular threats from the NDFB, with Ranjan Daimary, the president of the outlawed faction, having a recent round of heated discussion with the slain leader over several issues pertaining to the Bodo problem.

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It may be recalled that Rameswar Brahma, a younger brother of Bineswar Brahma, too was killed in 1993, by suspected NDFB militants at their Bhatemari residence in Kokrajhar district.

But even as the suspicion on the NDFB has intensified, B Irakdao, publicity secretary of the group, has denied the involvement of his organisation in Brahma’s murder. He dismissed Chief Minister Mahanta’s charge that the NDFB was behind Brahma’s murder, but not before admitting that the group indeed had difference of opinion with the Bodo Sahitya Sabha over the issue of script for the Bodo language.

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