Relatives in a bus at Tamulpur. Picture by Eastern Projections

Tamulpur/Guwahati, Dec. 24: Bhutan today handed over 64 women and children captured during the offensive there to the army at Tamulpur in Assam’s Nalbari district.

The handover was more of a homecoming for the group than the formal ceremony they expected it to be. An abandoned health centre had been converted into a makeshift shelter and, watched by curious onlookers, they sat down to partake of the food laid out for them.

The women and children were brought to Tamulpur in two buses from Samdrup Jongkhar, where the Royal Bhutan Army had kept them since December 15.

The relief on the face of Asomi Devi, a self-styled lieutenant of the banned Ulfa, mirrored the feelings of the rest of the group. Most of the women were clad in jeans.

They trooped into the makeshift home along with 27 children, looking confused at first. But they seemed to regain their composure after spending some time at the shelter. The relatively peaceful ambience was a soothing balm after the tension they had gone through in Bhutan as one militant camp after another fell.

Asomi Devi, accompanied by her three-year-old daughter Venus, admitted that she was relaxed after returning to Assam.

Over 350 captured women and children are still in Bhutan and will be handed over to the army in batches. Home commissioner B.K. Gohain said in Guwahati tonight that the first batch had been shifted to Nalbari town and the administration was ready to accept the second batch.

“The returnees will be provided proper accommodation, but the combatants, once identified, will be dealt with in accordance with the law of the land,” he said.

Though both Bhutan and India have been saying that women and children captured in the Himalayan kingdom are being treated well, Ulfa chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa said in a statement that the seven-year-old son of militant Rahul Dutta was killed in the “joint offensive by the Royal Bhutan Army and the Indian army”.

Rajkhowa said a pregnant woman from Dibrugarh, Diipla Phukan, was raped during the operation in Bhutan.

Criticising the chief ministers of Assam and Bengal for backing Bhutan’s offensive and treating militants as “misguided youths”, he said Tarun Gogoi’s offer of general amnesty to those who surrender before January 31 was unacceptable.

In New Delhi, an official of the International Committee of the Red Cross said the organisation wanted to provide humanitarian assistance to “Indian citizens captured and handed over to India”.