Sarukochizar (Assam): Seven-year-old Ajoy Basumatary was blown away in Assam on Monday while playing with a grenade.
Ajoy went collecting betel nut after a cyclonic storm uprooted several trees around his house in Sarukochizar. The village is barely a few kilometres from Barama on the NH-31 in Lower Assam.
Ajoy came across an unusually big object and wanted to cut it with a machete, that is when the grenade blew up Ajoy and injured four members of his family who saw Ajoy playing with the object.
His father, a farmer, who was in the fields, was too stunned to react.
The police say the grenade is of Austrian make. These are generally used by the ULFA. The outfit has been very active in this district. The police also suspect that the cluster of betel nut trees may have served as a shelter for the militants.
Baksa came into focus after the October 30 serial blast in 2008 when the suspects were tracked down to NDFB camps in this district. NDFB dominates this area and its not unusual for villagers under threat to provide shelter to the militants. What, however, is surprising is that despite Baksa being a hotbed of both ULFA and NDFB, it has not been in the radar of the security forces.