Family members of terror victims break down during the convention in Sivasagar on Wednesday. Picture by UB Photos

Sivasagar, July 20: Aita tumi nekandiba podhuliloi sai. Ma tumi nekandiba bisonaloi sai. Deuta aru nahe ghuri ghoroloi dunai… (Grandmother, please don’t weep and keep looking expectantly at the gate, Mother, please don’t cry looking at the bed because father will not return home).

The soulful song, rendered by a Class VIII student, opened a floodgate of tears at the Sivasagar Natya Mandir auditorium today, as families of victims of militancy relived the trauma of losing their own in the over three-decade insurgency in Assam.

Tears rolled down the cheeks of almost every member of the audience in the auditorium, including intellectuals sitting on the dais, as Yasmin sang her self-composed song, recalling how bereft she and her family had been after Ulfa militants shot her father in 1998.

More than a thousand victims of insurgency from across the state converged at Sivasagar today to take part in the anti-insurgency peace convention held for the first time to demand justice for the trauma they had gone through.

Yasmin was just 18 months old when her father, Abdul Ali, died and her memory of him has faded, but she managed to express in the true sense the pain that she, her mother and grandmother felt when they were told of her father’s death.

“I don’t remember my father but I have seen in all these years the trauma my mother and my grandmother have gone through. Tears have still not dried up in my mother's eyes and she cries whenever she is alone,” she told The Telegraph later.

It was not only Yasmin, but six-year-old Mrinmoy Barman, Darsana Kakoti, and others who expressed the pain and emptiness they had gone through as their fathers fell to militancy-induced violence.

“I don’t remember my father but it is painful when I see my friends with their fathers and realise what I am missing. I appeal to the militants to think twice before killing innocent people. I don’t want another child to lose his/her father,” said Mrinmoy, whose father died in a blast in Bongaigaon town in 2000.

There were tears in the eyes of Debabrata Saikia, MLA from Nazira and son of former chief minister Hiteswar Saikia, who sobbed as he was asked to address the gathering.

“I remember how my uncle used to ferry me to the school on his bicycle…,” Debabrata had to stop for a brief moment as he wiped his tears to recall memories of his uncle, Rohiteswar Saikia, who was killed by Ulfa in the early 1990s.

Zermina Bibi, a widow from Nalbari district, spoke about the trouble and difficulties that she is going through after Ulfa shot her husband dead along with six others in 2001. “As my husband was not a government employee, I have not received any pension and only I know what difficulties I am going through in bringing up my seven children,” she said.

The speakers and the gathering at the convention today pledged to keep raising their voice till justice was done.