File picture of one of the villagers injured in the firing

Shillong, May 25: The Meghalaya Human Rights Council, an NGO, today filed a PIL before the Shillong bench of Gauhati High Court seeking its intervention on the alleged rights violations in Langpih firing on May 14, which claimed four lives.

After hearing the petition, Justice Ramesh Surajmal Garg, who is the Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court, sought a report from Assam, Meghalaya and the Centre on the Langpih firing within four weeks.

The secretary general of the organisation, Dino Dympep, in the petition said his concern was not about the territorial dispute but the human rights violation of the indigenous people of the state.

The petitioner brought to the notice of the court “the illegal and perverse action of Assam police in resorting to indiscriminate firing (188 rounds) on a group of unarmed local villagers of Langpih in the West Khasi Hills district, Meghalaya, on May 14 without any provocation, thereby killing four innocent civilians and further injuring one person currently undergoing treatment at the North East Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Medical Sciences (NEIGRIMS), Shillong, for bullet injuries”.

The petitioner also said in the same incident, a local villager, B. Lyngkhoi, was picked up by Assam police and taken to Boko police station where he was beaten mercilessly and thereafter taken to the GMCH, where he was handcuffed to the bed when admitted for treatment.

Lyngkhoi has suffered multiple injuries and is currently admitted at Woodland Hospital here.

According to the petitioner, since the British era, Langpih in the West Khasi Hills district of the present day Meghalaya, was situated in Nongmynsaw Syiemship in the United Khasi and Jaintia Hills.

The petitioner said the deputy commissioner of the then United Khasi and Jaintia Hills district and the deputy commissioner of Kamrup district had settled and demarcated the boundaries of their respective districts and the same was published in the gazette notification dated September 23, 1876.

“Langpih was all along part and parcel of the United Khasi and Jaintia Hills district and as such with the creation of the state of Meghalaya, the same came into being part and parcel of the territory of the state of Meghalaya. As such a border outpost at Langpih was maintained by Meghalaya in Langpih,” the petitioner said.

However, in 1979 when K.P.S. Gill, was the DIG Western Range, Kamrup district, Assam, he was instrumental in closing down the border outpost at Langpih and since then Meghalaya has no border outpost at Langpih.

On the contrary, Assam police has since then set up a border outpost at Langpih, the petitioner added.