‘The police watched as my home was burnt’: Why Assam’s Karbi Anglong went up in flames

On the morning of December 24, Kalpana Dey stood outside the burnt remains of her shop and home at the Kheroni daily market in Assam.

A day earlier, a mob of more than 200 people had descended on the 58-year-old’s home on the bank of the Kopili river in West Karbi Anglong.

“I hid behind the bushes and trees to save my life,” Dey, who has been living in Kheroni for the last 40 years, said. “I saw others jumping into the river to escape.” By the time they left, nothing much had remained of her home.

Violence erupted in the area on December 22 after the police broke up a protest by the Karbi tribes against the alleged encroachment of grazing reserves by non-tribal settlers.

Over the next two days, angry tribal residents burnt down the ancestral home of a senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader, looted shops and then finally burnt homes and establishments in the Kheroni market.

Dey’s home and shop are only about 600 metres from the police station, reached by crossing the bridge over the Kopili river. But she alleged that they did nothing to stop the crowd.

“For the last two days, hundreds of police personnel have been stationed at the station,” she said. “But they did not do anything to stop the fire.”

Several Bihari residents of the area told Scroll that the angry men dragged out tables and other belongings of non-tribals and set them on fire right in front of the Kheroni police station.

“The police simply watched,” said a Bihari resident, who lives near the police station.

Dey’s neighbour Suraj Dey, a 32-year-old disabled man, was inside his home when the mob set it on fire. He could not get out in time. “By the time someone tried to rescue him, the fire had already spread,” she said.

When Scroll visited the Kheroni market on Wednesday, we found that all the non-tribal shops were either charred or looted. Over a dozen non-tribal houses had been burnt down.

“Not a single Karbi shop was burnt,” said 48-year-old Pannalal Das, whose hotel and homes were set on fire. “The police could have done a lathi charge or fired blanks to scatter the crowd but they only watched.”

Scroll contacted the Assam director-general of police and the inspector-general of police for a response to the allegations of the residents. The story will be updated if they respond.

Suraj Dey was among two people killed in the violence. The other person, a Karbi man, was killed in police firing, said a doctor at Kheroni Model Hospital.

The Karbi residents, too, blamed the police for triggering the violence by forcibly “dragging away” protestors at Phelangpi, about 3 km from Kheroni, on December 22.

Holiram Terang, a veteran Karbi politician and former minister, told Scroll: “The civil and police administration behaved almost indifferently, as if the situation were allowed to escalate.”

Leaders of the Karbi community said the violence was a response to the growth in non-tribal settlers in a Sixth Schedule area, which risks turning the Karbis into a minority. Terang alleged that the “open presence” of “Hindutva forces aggravated the situation.”

The fault line

A dispute has been brewing in the Karbi hills between the tribals and non-tribals over land for a while now. The hills are governed under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, which gives tribal communities exclusive rights over land, political rights and businesses.

Last February, a group claiming to represent the interests of Hindi-speaking communities of Karbi Anglong, met President Droupadi Murmu in Shillong to demand “protection of land rights of settlers” over village grazing reserves.

The move set off ripples of alarm in the tribal community.

In response, the Karbi Students Association held protests and demonstrations, demanding the eviction of non-tribals from the area. They also asserted that attempts to grant them land rights were against the provisions of the Sixth Schedule.

In February 2024, the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council ordered officials to evict over 2,000 families, mostly Biharis, from grazing land in the hills of Assam, describing them “unauthorized occupants” of the land.

The order was then challenged in the Gauhati High Court by 300-odd families. The court granted the petitioners interim relief.

However, Karbi residents said not all 2,000 families benefited from the court order and the state government could evict the others.

Litsong Rongphar, who has been leading the protest against the settlers since 2024, accused the BJP government of prioritising “vote bank” politics over the rights of tribal people. “If Muslims or Miyas were living in Kheroni today, they would have been evicted long back,” he said, referring to Bengal-origin Muslims in the state, thousands of whom have been evicted from government land by the Himanta Biswa Sarma government.

Rongphar added: “The BJP came to power with a promise to protect the natives’ land but here the illegal encroachers are Hindu communities. So, they don’t want to upset their vote bank.”

A hunger strike, and a riot

On December 6, a group of nine tribal residents, led by Rongphar, sat on an indefinite hunger strike at Phelangpi village, about 3 km from Kheroni daily market, demanding the immediate eviction of alleged illegal settlers from grazing land.

About 10 days later, the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council announced a meeting between Tulimar Ronghang, the chief executive member of the council, and the protestors on December 22.

But at 3 am on December 22, the police allegedly removed the protesters, including women, from the site. “The video showing how police commandos held guns to our necks and dragged us from the site triggered the common Karbi people,” said Rongphar. “It all started from there. Whatever happened was the fault of the government.”

Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma later said the protestors had been taken to Guwahati for medical examination. “Why did they come in the dark and take us to Guwahati and not any hospital nearby?” Rongphar asked.

Said Holiram Terang, the former minister, “Even an ordinary man knows this is an unjust way to force the struggle to stop.”

He added: “The people's shock and anger are quite justified. With no organisation to lead the people and elected representatives nowhere to be seen, mob violence is expected.”

As news of the police removing protestors on December 22 spread, agitated Karbi residents protested in front of the Kheroni police station, clashed with the police and set fire to the ancestral home of Ronghang.

Later in the evening, they turned their fury on the non-tribal shops in the Kheroni daily market.

By Monday evening, however, the situation appeared to improve with the state government agreeing to talks with the protestors.

Rongphar returned from Guwahati and called off the hunger strike.

Senior minister Ranoj Pegu along with the officials visited the place on Tuesday morning and held talks with both the groups.

But the situation took a turn for the worse when two communities began to gather on both sides of the river near Kheroni.

Hours before, the tribal community had been inflamed by a video of Bihari protesters allegedly shouting “Karbi go back” and calling the tribal residents derogatory names. They also carried saffron flags and shouted “Jai Shri Ram”.

While Karbis came on vehicles from villages 20 km away, Biharis arrived from nearby towns of Hojai and Lanka to protest the police inaction.

The police personnel took their positions on the bridge while both sides pelted stones at them. As the situation threatened to go out of hand, the police opened fire.

Linus Phangcho, a 40-year-old evangelist who works at a church, was among the hundreds of villagers who came to Kheroni from his native village, which is 20 km away. He was killed in police action.

“He sacrificed his life for our land and protection of Karbis,” his brother-in-law Wilson Keap told Scroll. Phangcho is survived by four children and his wife.

A doctor at Kheroni Model Hospital, where he was admitted, told Scroll that he was killed by “suspected bullet injuries”.

Inspector-general of police Akhilesh Kumar, however, said they had only fired tear gas shells and rubber bullets.

‘Sixth Schedule protections have collapsed’

The Karbis are Assam’s third-largest tribe, constituting 11.1% of the tribal population, after the Bodos and the Mising.

For decades, politics in the Karbi hills has revolved around the need to protect Karbis’ political, cultural and linguistic identity from outsiders. The anxiety stems from many waves of past migration.

The current violence is tied up with that fear.

Rongphar alleged that Sixth Schedule protections for the Karbis have “collapsed”.

“Non-tribals are not allowed to get land pattas and trading licences in a Sixth Schedule area, but they are still getting it,” he said. “The Bihari population has grown as they start many businesses and settle on land.” He alleged that Karbis have become a minority in several constituencies of Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council.

Another reason for the disquiet is that since 2017, a Bihari BJP leader Pawan Kumar has been the elected member of the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council from the local Kopili constituency.

“How can he contest the elections if he doesn't have land in Karbi hills?” Rongphar said. “The Biharis have already outnumbered us in Kopili constituency.”

Of the 42,000 voters in Kopili constituency, 18,000 are Hindi speakers, 10,000 Karbis, and 3,500 Gorkhas, Rongphar said.

However, Kumar told Scroll that his family had come to Kheroni before 1951, when the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council was created. He agreed that there were more Hindi speakers in Kopili. “But it is a false narrative that the Biharis are still coming to Karbi Anglong,” he said.

Terang, the Karbi politician, argued that the Karbis are “more vulnerable as a community now” than before, as the Assam government signs agreements to set up solar plants and palm oil plantations.

“As the government openly facilitates large corporations to establish large palm oil plantations, solar projects, and mine limestone and other minerals, including rare earth, in the hill areas, the common indigenous people will be pushed to further impoverishment,” he said.

All photographs by Rokibuz Zaman.