Firing over an eviction drive in Assam's Bura Chapori Wildlife Sanctuary left a woman dead while injuring six others on Monday. Rahima Khatun (40), a mother of two, was killed in retaliatory firing while a forester and two home guards sustained injuries. Three of Khatun's relatives also sustained injuries when violence erupted over land clearance.
The reserve forest and wetland in Sonitpur district had been at the centre of a massive eviction drive in February, early this year when government officials had cleared 1,282 hectares of land where more than 2,000 people had set up homes. However, inhabitants at the forest left 'peacefully' before the bulldozers came and hit their homes, according to a report by the Indian Express.
However, evicted families eventually started returning to their former homelands and began erecting structures and started living there. The forest department claims those who had been evicted in February were trying to resettle there.
On Monday, when a forest department team led by the Divisional Forest Officer of Nagaon Wildlife, Jayanta Deka, arrived at the site, a confrontation started between the two parties. While the brawl escalated, Khatun was left dead while her husband sustain injuries from a gunshot and was later hospitalised.
According to the media report, Khatun's family was living in a kutcha house, a few kilometres away from the spot. Due to heavy rains and a rising water level, they had moved here, where they had their house once, put up tarpaulin and was staying with their cattle.