2 communities,2 relief camps,same fears,same helplessness

The situation had been growing tense since July 20,but we thought the police and the government would do something. As rumours and threats increased,all families of our village spent one night at the gaon-burras village headman house. The whole night we heard loud shouts from the adjoining villages. Next morning,our elders packed off the women and children here, recalls Bhautina.

No sooner had the women and children left,the village was attacked. First they looted our valuables. Then,they set our houses on fire. But our apha refused to leave. He said he would rather die there. A few neighbours lifted him and put him into a truck, added Kalpana.

When I looked back after travelling a kilometre or so,I saw smoke rising from our village. I fainted. I dont know whether I will be able to go back to my village ever, said a tearful Narendra,a retired schoolteacher.

Kalpana,who was in her office at Gosaigaon,6 km from Aminkhata,when the violence began,rues losing all her certificates,insurance documents and bank passbook. I managed to jump into a truck to reach here straight from Gosaigaon. As we drove towards Kokrajhar,we could see our village on fire, she said. Kalpana lodged an FIR at the Gosaigaon police station on July 3.

Will the government,police guard us forever,asks Nazrul Islam Fakir
Kamandanga Dhubri

I have lost everything. My cattle,my bicycle,my house8230; everything is gone. Allah saved our lives as we ran through the jute fields amid gunshots, says Nazrul Islam Fakir,a resident of Howriapeta village under Sapkota police outpost. He is now one of the 7,726 persons put up in the Kamandanga Higher Secondary Madrasa School here,about 60 km from Dhubri,the district headquarter.

Residents of 103 villages,all in Gosaigaon subdivision of Kokrajhar,are staying in this camp. While some people had fled after their villages were attacked,some ran away out of fear.

Fakir 46 earns his living selling goats in Barobhisa near Alipurduar in adjoining West Bengal. I go to Alipurduar four days a week and sell five to six goats each day that my eldest son Rafiqul and I carry on bicycles. Now I am a beggar, he laments. Their village was attacked and burnt down around 4 pm on July 24.

It was a big gang. They came on 20-25 bikes and a few Boleros firing in the air. We ran through the muddy jute fields towards the highway. They were dressed in black8230; masked, recalls Fakir,who had two huts in the village where his two wives Juhora Bibi and Fatema Bibi lived separately with their respective children five sons and two daughters in all.

We had two bicycles,one radio,one mobile phone,a bank passbook and a few hundred rupees. We could not bring anything. As we fled we saw our village burning, he says,recalling how he met all his family members at the relief camp only the next morning.

Fakir says he does not own any land,but had a temporary patta on government khas land. I have about one bigha of khas land where I grow vegetables and rear some goats and about a dozen cows, he says. Fakir had studied up to Class VII,but is currently the president of Howriapeta LP School that the villagers had set up about 20 years ago. Howriapeta had 365 families,most of whom are farm labourers or small traders like Fakir.

Having already spent two weeks in the overcrowded relief camp,Fakir and his family,like most others,want to go back. But how can we? Can the government provide police to guard us forever? Fakir asks.