On the morning of December 24, Kalpana Dey stood outside the burnt remains of her shop and home at the Kheroni daily market in Assam.
A day earlier, a mob of more than 200 people had descended on the 58-year-old’s home on the bank of the Kopili river in West Karbi Anglong.
“I hid behind the bushes and trees to save my life,” Dey, who has been living in Kheroni for the last 40 years, said. “I saw others jumping into the river to escape.” By the time they left, nothing much had remained of her home.
Violence erupted in the area on December 22 after the police broke up a protest by the Karbi tribes against the alleged encroachment of grazing reserves by non-tribal settlers.
Over the next two days, angry tribal residents burnt down the ancestral home of a senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader, looted shops and then finally burnt homes and establishments in the Kheroni market.
Dey’s home and shop are only about 600 metres from the police station, reached by crossing the bridge over the Kopili river. But she alleged that they did nothing to stop the crowd.
“For the last two days, hundreds of police personnel have been stationed at the station,” she said. “But they did…
Source: ‘The police watched as my home was burnt’: Why Assam’s Karbi Anglong went up in flames
