New Delhi: That the Assam Police was surprised by the sudden turn of events is to say the least. It did not expect such a fierce response from the Mizoram side on Monday morning when all hell broke loose. And when the gunfight ended, Assam Police had a high casualty figure of five dead while one passed away in the Silchar hospital on Tuesday even as about 70 policemen and others were injured.
“It was the Mizoram Police that first fired tear gas shells that landed inside the Assam border. Then all of a sudden they opened up with automatic weapons from the Mizoram side. Several automatic weapons including LMGs opened up from several positions that were located on heights. As soon as the gunfire started we ran helter-skelter to save our lives,” said a local journalist who was part of a team of about five journalists present on the spot when the exchange of fire took place.
While the small town of Lailapur is located on the Assam side, Vairengte, where the famous counter-insurgency and jungle warfare school is located, begins on the other side.
Geographically, the Assam side is located beneath the Mizoram side as the terrain and the road begins the upward climb towards the Lushai Hills.
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What is also intriguing many is the use of LMGs and automatics in the firefight. Asks a serving Indian Army colonel who has completed several counter-insurgency assignments in the Northeast: “LMGs are used by forces to hold positions or to give supporting fire. It is certainly not a weapon to be used by a state police force on another unless if the intention is to kill.”
Social media videos of the incident show the presence of heavily-armed civilians on the Mizoram side, at least one with a helmet which is not of ordnance issue and a telescopic sight fitted gun indicating sniping capabilities.
“The cover positions that these individuals in civil dress take in the video indicate that they have undergone at least some sort of military training. The guns they hold are not standard issue weapons. The abiding mystery therefore is who are these individuals and where did they get such weapons from,” asks the official who did not want to be named.
While Mizoram has a history of insurgency led by the Mizo National Front (MNF) for nearly 25 restive years till 1986, weapons originating or transiting from Myanmar have often been traced to the state.
Another complexity has been added by the presence of ethnic Chin refugees in the state who have fled Myanmar after the February coup by the military junta.
Chins, of the same ethnic stock as the Mizos, have their own ethnic armed organization called the Chin National Front (CNF) and the newly-raised Chin National Defense Force (CNDF), that aims to set up a separate independent homeland in Myanmar. After the February coup this year, many cadres have fled to India after crossing the Mizoram-Myanmar border.
Many eye-witnesses of the incident that ETV Bharat spoke to, seem to be genuinely puzzled by the extent of aggression from the Mizoram side.
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“While there has been unease between the two sides for quite some time, the sudden and explosive reaction by the Mizoram side is surprising. Already apprehensive of the obvious increasing numbers of Bengali-speaking Muslim inhabitants on the Assam side thus raking up the perceived fear of influx of illegal immigration from Bangladesh, they have been on the edge. And on Monday morning, that apprehension exploded into rage,” says a local resident of Lailapur who did not want to be named as he feared being targeted.
The fear of being flooded by swarms of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh is an abiding fear shared by most indigenous communities in the Northeastern states.
