Sumki, wife of Pawan Sarma, at home on Monday. Picture by Sarat Sarma

Bamuni Sukanjuri, Nov. 3: Suspected militants from the Karbi tribe called three Bihari men out of their homes and shot them dead today in this village in central Assam’s Nagaon district.

The Chhath-eve killings raised fears of a rerun of last year’s hate campaign that saw 34 Hindi speakers massacred in the Karbi Anglong hill district bordering Sukanjuri.

“The Karbi Longri National Liberation Front, active in this area, is behind the carnage,” Nagaon deputy commissioner J. Balaji said.

The group had last night kidnapped a 55-year-old Hindi-speaking ginger trader, Sunalal Prasad, from a Karbi Anglong market area 145km from Guwahati.

Today the rebels, who want a Karbi state, targeted two of the three Hindi-speaking familes in Sukanjuri, most of whose residents are Tiwas, Karbis or Ahoms.

They knocked on the doors of Jogesh Shah, 55, and neighbour Pawan Sarma, 27, around 5.30am and asked for directions to a nearby town. Minutes after the two men and Jogesh’s son Mahesh, 30, had stepped out with the strangers, others villagers heard gunshots. They ran after the group to find three blood-soaked bodies.

Sukanjuri’s 200-odd families make a living by collecting firewood from a nearby hill and selling it in local markets. Pawan’s wife Sumki, whom he had married four months ago, said her husband and father-in-law were preparing to go out to collect firewood when she heard voices outside.

“I heard someone call out for my husband. After some time I heard gunshots and ran out. Others too came out of their homes. We saw people running towards the hills. The three bodies lay on the fringe of the village,” she sobbed.

The Sarma family, which includes Pawan’s sister Sangeeta, a higher secondary student, and the Shahs live in adjoining huts.

Neighbour Ainus Dempta said Sukanjuri’s three Hindi-speaking families ha d arrived from Bihar a few years ago and got along well with everyone else. “There was no problem among us,” he said, adding that the villagers had often seen “unknown faces with arms” in the nearby forests. “But till now nobody had been harmed; nor did the gunmen enter the village.”

Suspected Karbi Longri militants fired on a family travelling in an Indica at Karbi Anglong’s Tissam village this evening but no one was injured, police said.