Kokrajhar Riots

Twenty-year-old Unish Hembram lost her father and her home just 15 days after she was born in the riots of 1996 in Assam's Kokrajahar. But instead of giving in to the tragedy, she decided to change her story.

In the aftermath of the ethnic clashes that erupted in Bodo-dominated areas of Assam last year, more than four lakh people moved to relief camps set up by the state all across the territory. While most of these camps have closed now, there are two that are still teeming with refugees.

Two months after Assam witnessed its worst ethnic violence in a decade, the epicentre of those riots, in which more than 99 people were killed and five lakhs displaced from their homes, is simmering again.

There was little time to do anything but grab her two young boys and run as fast as she could when the gunmen came into the northeast village in the dead of night and began firing. Along with scores of other villagers, nine-months pregnant Rohima Begum hid with her family waist-deep in the rice fields as the gunshots rang out amid the screams of th...

The ethnic violence in Assam has dominated the first day of Parliament's Monsoon Session. Describing the riots in and around Kokrajhar as the biggest failure of the Centre, BJP leader LK Advani said, "Of the state's three-crore population, upto 400,000 are homeless... this is an unprecedented crisis."

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's helicopter returned midway from a flight to strife-torn Kokrajhar district today due to a technical problem.

45 people have been killed in ethnic clashes in Assam and nearly four lakh people are now housed in 200 relief camps, said Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today. He aggressively denied that his government had denied an alert from the Centre about the escalating tension that spiralled into a national crisis.

Twenty-year-old Unish Hembram lost her father and her home just 15 days after she was born in the riots of 1996 in Assam's Kokrajahar. But instead of giving in to the tragedy, she decided to change her story.

In the aftermath of the ethnic clashes that erupted in Bodo-dominated areas of Assam last year, more than four lakh people moved to relief camps set up by the state all across the territory. While most of these camps have closed now, there are two that are still teeming with refugees.

Two months after Assam witnessed its worst ethnic violence in a decade, the epicentre of those riots, in which more than 99 people were killed and five lakhs displaced from their homes, is simmering again.

There was little time to do anything but grab her two young boys and run as fast as she could when the gunmen came into the northeast village in the dead of night and began firing. Along with scores of other villagers, nine-months pregnant Rohima Begum hid with her family waist-deep in the rice fields as the gunshots rang out amid the screams of th...

The ethnic violence in Assam has dominated the first day of Parliament's Monsoon Session. Describing the riots in and around Kokrajhar as the biggest failure of the Centre, BJP leader LK Advani said, "Of the state's three-crore population, upto 400,000 are homeless... this is an unprecedented crisis."

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's helicopter returned midway from a flight to strife-torn Kokrajhar district today due to a technical problem.

45 people have been killed in ethnic clashes in Assam and nearly four lakh people are now housed in 200 relief camps, said Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today. He aggressively denied that his government had denied an alert from the Centre about the escalating tension that spiralled into a national crisis.