The Assam Police have stopped a group of people from Mizoram from building a road in Cachar district, the Hindustan Times reported on Wednesday. The police said that the land on which the road was being built was in Assam’s territory.

Assam’s Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi districts border Kolasib, Aizawl and Mamit in Mizoram. The boundary between Assam and Mizoram is disputed at several points. The two states have often sparred over it, sometimes violently.

On November 8, the residents of Cachar district noticed that people from Mizoram were building a road on forest land, the Hindustan Times reported.

The district’s Superintendent of Police Ramandip Kaur said that the work was stopped because it was being done on Assam’s side.

“This is not the first time they [people from Mizoram] were attempting to construct a road on Assam’s land,” Kaur told the newspaper. “In the past also, we stopped similar activities but this time they were doing it during the night.”

A senior police officer in Mizoram acknowledged that the construction was a mistake. “People from a village panchayat of our district was involved in the construction,” Kolasib Superintendent of Police P Vanlalfaka Ralte said, according to the Hindustan Times. “It was under their farming land and they didn’t understand the border.”

Ralte assured the Assam Police that the construction will not resume for now.

Conflict between the two states had flared up in July, leading to the deaths of five police officers from Assam. On August 5, Assam and Mizoram signed a joint declaration to find a lasting solution to the border conflict.

Tensions along the Assam-Mizoram border cropped up again later in August over the construction of a bridge. The Mizoram police filed a case against Assam police officers for allegedly stealing building material from the project site, while Assam claimed that the bridge was being built in its territory.

However, Mizoram withdrew the case after an official returned the materials.

Crude bomb found along border defused

The Assam Police’s bomb squad on Wednesday defused a crude bomb that had been found along the border five days ago, India Today reported.

The bomb had been detected near a newly constructed bridge in Kulicherra in Cachar district, according to News18.

A week before that, an explosion had taken place near the Baicherra outpost of Assam Police in Hailakandi district. An official of the Mizoram Police was arrested after the blast.