india

Updated: Jul 13, 2014 23:21 IST

The Army has been kept on stand-by as tension mounted in Assam’s Baksa district on Sunday when bodies of three more persons, kidnapped by suspected National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit) militants, were retrieved from Beki River.

Bodies of all the four who were kidnapped on Friday night by suspected NDFB(S) militants, including two teenaged boys, have now been found. The first body, with a cut mark to the head, was recovered on Saturday evening from the river in Barpeta district.

Baksa Deputy Commissioner Vinod Seshan said, “We have recovered three more bodies from Beki river. We do not know the type of injuries these bodies bore. The details will be known after investigation.”

The bodies recovered on Sunday were identified as those of Ataur Rahman (27), Rubul Amin (45) and Saddam Ali (13), while that of Bakar Ali (13) was found on Saturday. The four were among seven lemon traders from Barpeta district who had gone to Labdanguri market in the neighbouring Baksa district.

Family members of the victims and villagers from Barpeta have refused to conduct the last rites and have demanded that chief minister Tarun Gogoi visit the area to address their grievances.

Indefinite curfew was clamped in Salbari sub-division and Anand Bazar in Baksa since Saturday morning. At the Anand Bazar area, police fired rubber bullets and used batons to disperse a mob who were protesting the kidnap in violation of the imposed curfew. The protesters also beat up a police officer, said Seshan, adding, “Police had to use force as the people violated the curfew and refused to leave the place.”

The state government on Saturday evening replaced the Baksa Superintendent of Police Nimbalkar Vaibhav Chandrakant and appointed 10th Assam Police Battalion commandant Mojibur Rahman in his place.