Jirania (West Tripura), Jan. 27: Young Kanu Roy and his bride Mayarani had managed to escape death in the infamous Mandai massacre on June 8, 1980. But bullets separated them last night when a volley of gunfire felled Kanu.
In terror-stricken Mistripara village, where rebels gunned down 11 and injured several others on a night of mayhem, the only sign of life was the wail of people who had lost their near and dear ones.
Settled on government land in Mistripara area under Bankimnagar gaon panchayat under a special rehabilitation scheme, Kanu took to pulling rickshaws for a living and had fixed his daughter Ruma?s wedding for February 19.
Like the rest of the residents of Mistripara, Kanu?s wife Mayarani sat shell-shocked on the earthen veranda of her thatched house. ?How could they come so far to kill him?? was all she managed to say.
This is the question haunting the eight families of the eleven slain men, women and children. Over the past decade, Mistripara became densely populated as hundreds of non-tribal families from the northern and eastern interiors of Mandai settled down here.
Located just beside a pucca road within 200 yards of the Tripura Engineering College, Mistripara is only one-and-half km away from the Jirania police station and the Assam-Agartala national highway, 30 km from Agartala.
?This is a premeditated attack as all eight affected families traditionally owe allegiance to the CPM,? said Ramkrishna Shil, who runs a saloon near the engineering college. ?I realised something was wrong and immediately closed my shop. But I came to know what happened only after the police arrived,? he said.
But Santosh Shil, a fellow barber, was not so lucky. Apart from his two children, six-year-old Probir and four-year-old Lipika, Shil also lost his parents Prankrishna and Pranbala. Chandan Bhowmik, a neighbour said, ?The militants broke open their door and sprayed bullets on the children and their grandparents.? Santosh and his wife Pratima survived because they were working outside. As a stunned Santosh sat in Agartala?s G.B. Hospital waiting to receive the bodies, Pratima lay on a cot, unconscious.
Another local CPM worker, Manaranjan Shil, met a similar fate. Militants gunned down Shil, his wife and his 15-year-old daughter. Shil?s son Krishna is now waiting in the hospital for the bodies.
Last night?s killing in Mistripara revived memories of a similar massacre of nine people of a single family at Chakbasta area, three km west of the village in January 1988, days before the assembly elections.