Forty-two years after one of India’s most horrific communal incidents, the wounds of Nellie have been reopened with the release of two long-suppressed reports on the massacre that took place in a village about 40 km from Guwahati in February 1983. Nearly 2000 Bengali-speaking Muslim immigrants, mostly women and children, were slaughtered in the incident that took place over a matter of hours and remains one of independent India and Assam’s darkest chapters. It occurred at the height of the statewide agitation led by the All Assam Students Union, the All Assam Gana Sangram Parishad, and other groups who were calling for a boycott of the elections after the Centre rejected their demand to scrutinise electoral rolls and exclude........

© Free Press Journal