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Violence in East India

According to IBNLive, death toll is now 32 & ULFA or All Tripura Tiger Force is involved.

An official said that several people have been injured though he refused to give any figures. Unofficial estimates say that at least 32 people have died in the blasts - seven people have died in the Fancy Bazaar blasts and 15 people have died in the Kokrajhar blasts.

"Intelligence sources have told CNN-IBN that the 'Bravo Company' of the 28th battalion of ULFA could be behind the blasts. Two companies of the 28th battalion of ULFA - Alfa and Charlie - have already signed a ceasefire agreement with the government of Assam. ULFA therfore finds itself decimated completely.

However, other officials suspect All Tripura Tiger Force, who trained alongwith the ULFA.

These two groups are the only ones which have the capability of organising such coordinated blasts.
 
Probably Maoists again. Those b@st@rds simply won't die out.

RIP to the poor victims.
 
These terror attacks are slowly but surely bringing change and reform in the way our country views it security.

I wonder how many more lives will be lost before the babus are motivated enough to push through a foolproof anti-terror mechanism.

However, things are a lot better now than say 20 years ago, when ULFA cadres used to openly roam the streets and extort people.

One can only hope that these are the dying screams of the terrorists.
 

30 Oct 2008

Islamabad - Pakistan's president and prime minister strongly condemned the series of bomb blasts that killed at least 54 people and injured more than 200 in India's north-eastern state of Assam on Thursday.

"Terrorism and extremism need to be eradicated in all its forms and manifestations," President Asif Ali Zardari said, according to a statement issued from his office.

Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani expressed grief about the killing of innocent people in the blasts in a message to the Indian leadership from the Turkey where he is attending a meeting of the World Economic Forum. - Sapa-dpa
 

NEW DELHI, Nov 4 APP: Hindu extremists assaulted tree Christians in Uttarakhand state and tired to burn copies of the Bible. In protest, the Christian community staged demonstration in Dehra Dun, capital of the state demanding action against workers of Vir Savarkar Morcha and other Hindu outfits, which allegedly assaulted three Christians and tried to burn the copies of Bible at Choela Butuwala village last evening.

Media reports quoting police sources said that about fifty 50 workers of Vir Savarkar Morcha and other Hindu outfits collected copies of Bible and other religious literature from a church in the village and tried to burn it. On resistance, three Christians were beaten up, police sources said. A senior police official said three persons were arrested. However, since their crime was bailable, they were released on bail.
 
India’s north-east

Bodo count
Oct 9th 2008 | DELHI
From The Economist print edition

Assam’s largest tribe goes to war with its Muslims

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INDIA’S north-east is “an anthropologist’s delight and an administrator’s nightmare”, notes Sanjoy Hazarika, author of several books about the region. Its 39m people divide into 350 ethnic groups, many of whom feel estranged from the Indian “mainland” and uneasy about each other. This unease can quickly turn to violence. From October 3rd to 7th, members of Assam’s largest tribe, the Bodo (pronounced Boro), fought bitterly with local Muslims, before troops and paramilitaries sent by the central government quelled the violence. By then, 53 people had died, 25 of them shot by the police, and 150,000 people had sought shelter in camps.

The motives behind the attacks are disputed. Most press accounts blamed anti-immigrant sentiment, which runs deep in Assamese politics. The state’s border with overcrowded Bangladesh is impossible to police. Illegal migrants, who find jobs as rickshaw-pullers, brickmakers and house-servants, may number as many as 2m in Assam, thinks Mr Hazarika.

Under the Assam Accord of 1985, the government promised to identify and deport people who had crossed the border since the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. But the government lacks the ability to fulfil this pledge; it may also lack the inclination. Assam’s employers benefit from Bangladeshi labour and its political parties court their votes. In July the north-east’s High Court ordered the removal of 49 Bangladeshis, some of whom had registered to vote in the state. An intemperate judge described the influx of migrants as a “cancerous growth” and called for “political will” and “public activism” to fight it.

It is tempting to view the latest violence as an example of such activism run amok. But the Bodos’ antagonists were not principally Bangladeshis, points out Bibhu Prasad Routray of the Institute for Conflict Management, a think-tank in Delhi. They were instead Indian Muslims settled in the state before 1971, who were ready to fight back. The Bodos, among the earliest settlers in the Assamese plains, resent any outsider who encroaches on their tribal homelands. They do not make subtle legal distinctions between them.

The bloodshed may serve larger political ambitions, Mr Routray argues. In four districts where the Bodos are in the majority the tribe is governed by the Bodoland Territorial Council, which enjoys considerable autonomy under India’s supple constitution. Some members of the tribe may be keen to create more Bodo-majority areas, by driving everyone else out. These territories might then be allowed to fall under the authority of the council.

This autonomy was the fruit of a 2003 peace deal between India’s government and the Bodo Liberation Tigers, who had waged a seven-year insurgency demanding a state of their own. Their leaders were quick to blame the four days of violence on a rival guerrilla group called the National Democratic Front of Bodoland, which has yet to make peace. But Mr Routray doubts the Front had much to do with it. Since it agreed to a ceasefire in 2005, many of its rank-and-file members have moved to camps, closely supervised by the government. And the group’s leadership has no quarrel with Muslims. Indeed, they have found sanctuary in Bangladesh.
 
24 Nov 2008

Hindu fundamentalists are offering compensation in money, clothing, or basic necessities for those who succeed in killing Christian leaders, destroying their property, or burning down churches. The escalation of the situation has prompted the Indian government to create a special branch in the security forces, to stop the wave of violence that has overwhelmed the country. This morning, interior minister Shivraj Patil, during a summit with police leaders, recalled the violence against Christians in Orissa, Karnataka, and Kerala, adding that only a special security division can guarantee adequate protection for the victims and the displaced.

A source at the All India Christian Council (AICC) says that the rewards vary according to the importance of the target: the "going rate" for the death of a priest or a pastor is 250 U.S. dollars, but food, gasoline, or imported liquors are also offered. In order to complete the project of wiping out Christians in Orissa, the fundamentalists are also enlisting women, who receive specific training in centers set up by the Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of the nationalist Hindu party Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

"Different objectives have different prices," reports the British NGO Release International, relating the words of the AICC spokesman, and these can range "from murder to the destruction of churches or of Christian property." "The killing of a pastor or priest," confirms Faiz Rahman, president of Good News India, "is worth 250 U.S. dollars." Rahman says that he has helped 25 priests to leave the refugee camps, but there are still "about 250 religious leaders still in the centers set up by the government." He maintains that "they are top-tier targets" for the Hindu fundamentalists, so they must be helped to leave the refugee camps for more secure locations.

Sources in the AICC affirm that in addition to the rewards, the Bajrang Jal has begun training programs specifically for female soldiers to be used to exterminate Christians in rural areas. "They meet in secret," says the spokesman of the Christian movement, "and they are trained to use swords and clubs to fight and kill."

In addition to persecution, the displaced Christians in the refugee centers must now also confront the arrival of winter: "Thousands of Christians now face the hardship of winter in camps for the displaced," says Andy Dipper, head of Release International. "Relief aid is needed now, and India must take urgent action to contain the violence, which has spread to other states. The authorities must safeguard the lives and homes of Christians under threat from ultra-nationalist Hindus."
 
NEW DELHI, Nov 23 (APP): According to investigations into Malegaon blasts and linkages of a senior Indian army officer with it, there are strong indications that Hindu outfits are emerging as major terror network in India.

The Maharashtra Anti‑terrorism Squad has arrested ten persons including a serving Indian army officer Lt. Col. Shrikant Purohit in connection with Malagaon blasts which took place outside a mosque which killed eight persons.

So far, according to media reports clues have been found links of outfits with Samjhauta Express blasts, Nanded blasts and other explosions which took place in Muslim localities in India.

Meanwhile, media reports said that Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will reopen the Nanded blasts case as fresh leads have emerged from investigation in Malegaon case.

In Nandad, the explosion occurred at the residence of a RSS worker Laxman Rajkondwar in 2006. His son Naresh and Himanshu Panse, who was VHP activist, were killed while making the bombs.

During an earlier investigation by the CBI into Nanded blast case, voice of an accused had to be restored after operating his vocal chord which was damaged in the explosion. He had informed the probing team that Naresh Rajkondwar, a Bajrang Dal activist wasresponsible for carrying out three blasts outside mosques that shook Jalna and Parbani in Maharashtra in 2003 and 2004.
 
Dirt Swines - as if there is any dearth of Politics of Religion in India.

However , of they are found guilty they should not be arrested immediately , they should be shot dead.
 

GAUHATI, India (AP) — A bomb exploded in a train coach in India's insurgency-hit northeast on Tuesday, killing at least three people and injuring another 29, a state government official said.

The explosion occurred shortly after the train arrived at Diphu railroad station, about 200 miles (300 kilometers) south of Gauhati, the capital of Assam state, said District Magistrate M.C. Sahu.

The train was heading from Lumding in central Assam to the eastern commercial hub of Tinsukhia, Sahu said.

Tuesday's blast comes just days after suspected Muslim militants attacked targets across Mumbai, killing at least 172 people and injuring 239. Tuesday's blast was not seen as related to the Mumbai attacks.

Two train passengers were killed on the spot and one of the 30 wounded later died in a hospital, said Bhaskar Mahanta, a police official. Two of the wounded were in critical condition.

The bomb was a timed device, left in a bag on an overhead rack of the train coach and it blew off a part of the roof, said another police official, K.K. Sharma.

While no one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, Sharma said an ethnic insurgent group, Karbi Longri National Liberation Front, fighting for wide autonomy in the state for the past five years, was suspected.

The front is one of the three groups active in the region; the other two groups have reached cease-fire accords with the government.

Separately, suspected insurgents shot and killed two migrant workers in the same district on Tuesday, Mahanta told The Associated Press.

The two petty traders from northern India were pulled out from their homes in Dolamara, a village, and fatally shot, he said, blaming the same insurgent group, Karbi Longri National Liberation Front.

Suspected separatists have killed nearly 300 migrants over the past three years in Assam state. They have been targeting thousands of Hindi-speaking migrants from northern states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh who they claim usurp the local population's job opportunities.

In October, the state witnessed 13 coordinated bomb attacks, which killed 89 people and wounded more than 800 in four towns.

Several insurgents groups are battling for power, for ethnic pride and for control of drug routes in India's northeast, an isolated collection of seven states and hundreds of ethnic groups and subgroups. They fight the government and they fight each other in a region crippled by poverty and political chaos.
 

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