The Assam and Meghalaya governments have agreed to wind up the judicial commissions probing the Mukroh killings and hand the case over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), to maintain neutrality of events.
In November 2022, Assam Forest Protection Force personnel fired on alleged timber smugglers from Meghalaya at Mukroh, a village on the inter-State boundary that both Assam and Meghalaya claim as their own. Six people, including a forest guard, were killed in the firing.
The incident happened almost nine months after the two States signed an “historic” agreement to settle a 50-year-old dispute in six of the 12 areas of differences along their 885-km border.
“The two States constituted a judicial commission each to probe the incident but could not progress as witnesses from Assam failed to go for a hearing in Meghalaya and those from Meghalaya declined to come to Assam. As a confidence-building measure, we have decided to hand over the case to a neutral Central agency like the CBI,” Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told journalists after a meeting with his Meghalaya counterpart Conrad K. Sangma in Guwahati on Saturday.
The two governments have also decided to request the CBI not to register the case either in Guwahati or in Shillong but in a neutral venue, Dr. Sarma said.
“We have also decided to let the personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force man the point of confrontation at Khanduli (another flashpoint) and let the police outposts of both the States, now eyeball-to-eyeball, move 200 metres inside their own territories,” he said.
Dr. Sarma also said the Assam government was ready to settle the dispute in three of the six existing areas of difference, although the regional committees of both the States concerned would take the final call.
“We have asked our regional committees to make a presentation before the Meghalaya Chief Minister and resolve the dispute as quickly as possible,” he said.
He further said the Survey of India had completed the mapping of the six areas where the dispute had been resolved more than a year ago. “The border pillars will now be erected with both the governments having accepted the position,” he said.
