"Ground Zero" of July 26 bloodbath: CRPF 147 BT Organizes ‘Civic Action Program’ to Foster Peace At Assam Mizoram Border

147 battalion of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) organized a Civic Action Program at a ground zero in Assam Mizoram border in Lailapur-Variengte to foster peace and tranquillity and bridge the area the gap between two local communities. CRPF has chosen this place for its program. It saw a violent turn of events on July 26 this year whereby many police personals of Assam were killed in an interstate border skirmish between Assam and Mizoram.

“This place was chosen as on 26 July this year local people from the two neighboring states had to go through a tensed situation, so we are doing this civic action program whereby we will be distributing essential daily life goods to the local peoples of Lailapur (Assam) and Variengte (Mizoram), and to gather people of both sides in a place, to engage them in dialogue and reduce the gap,” said DIG Shahnawaz Hussain Khan while addressing the media.

Many people from both Variengte and Lailapur came to the programme, including men, women, and children, he informed. “They have appreciated our effort,” Khan added. “We have organized these types of Civic Action Programs before, we have held clinical camps, and we (CRPF) want to restore peace in this border.”

In a sharp escalation of the age-old boundary dispute between Assam and Mizoram, six Assam Police personnel were killed in violent clashes on July 26 this year at a contested border point where tensions had been simmering. Fifty policemen were injured, including Vaibhav Chandrakant Nimbalkar, SP of Assam’s Cachar district, who had sustained a bullet injury in the leg.

On November 26, Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma and his Mizoram counterpart Zoramthanga, decided to form committees to resolve the decades-old border dispute between the two states while maintaining peace at a meeting with Union home minister Amit Shah in New Delhi.