Assam eviction drive: 250 homes bulldozed in village where police shot dead two men

Authorities in Assam’s Kamrup Metropolitan district have bulldozed 250 homes in the past two days in an eviction drive that resumed less than two weeks after two men were shot dead by the police amid violent protests.

The demolitions took place at the Kachutali-1 village in the Kamrup Metropolitan district. Additional Deputy Commissioner Biswajit Saikia told Scroll that the eviction drive will continue on Thursday as well.

Officials from the district administration had on September 9 bulldozed nearly 240 homes, the majority of them belonging to Bengali-origin Muslims from Morigaon district. The residents had built their homes in the low-lying area over several decades.

Three days later, on September 12, the officials returned and gave them an ultimatum to vacate the land in two hours. This led to a violent clash between the residents and the officials, during which two men were shot dead by the police.

Thirty-three persons, including 22 government and police officers, were also injured in the clash.

Of the homes demolished on Wednesday, one belonged to 19-year-old Haidar Ali, who was among the two persons shot dead on September 12, his elder brother Hakim Uddin told Scroll.

Hakim said that the home was marked with red on September 22, after which the family feared that it would be bulldozed.

“We have already lost our brother,” he said. “Now we don’t have any home or roof too…there is no place to weep or grieve.”

The land on which Hakim’s home stood fell in the Miyadi patta, or permanent settlement, category. He said that the family had bought the house in 1998 from an individual from a tribal community, but had not registered it in their name.

Haider Ali’s family said they did not know that the area fell under the Adivasi belt, and were ignorant about how land is transferred from person to person.

His father, Makbul Hussain, said the family has an affidavit stating that he had paid Rs 12,000 to buy and take possession of this plot of land. Hussain had come to the Kachauli village after the Brahmaputra river eroded their ancestral home in Mayong, Morigaon district.

Legal battle

The residents of the village moved the Gauhati High Court challenging the eviction notice they were served on September 13.

The eviction notice alleged that the residents were in “illegal” possession of the land and were “unauthorised” to claim the plot as it was meant for those belonging to the Scheduled Tribes, as per the Assam Land and Revenue Regulation. It ordered them to vacate the land within three days.

On Friday, the High Court stayed the eviction of several families from a plot of land in the village after the residents said that they had titles to it. The court directed the residents to prove their case before the district’s deputy commissioner.

The stay order was issued after the Assam government told the court that no action would be taken against the families till the deputy commissioner had decided on the residents’ pleas.

The homes razed on Tuesday do not belong to the families who got the stay order from the High Court, The Indian Express quoted Sonapur Circle Officer Nitul Khataniar as saying.

“In the first phase, we had conducted evictions on government land,” Khataniar was quoted as saying. “This is the second phase where we are conducting it on personal patta land.”

Khataniar added that the demolished structures had been removed so that the affected families do not return to settle in the area again.

The administration in Goalpara district also carried out a demolition drive in which 450 families, or about 2,000 persons, were evicted, the Hindustan Times reported.

The families were illegally occupying 55 hectares of the Bandarmatha Reserve Forest, the newspaper quoted unidentified officials as saying. The evictions in Goalpara were carried out in line with a High Court order.

Also read: Three days after a peaceful eviction drive in Assam, why did two men die in police firing?