The Scars of Terror
A 35-year-old woman was beheaded in front of her four small children (the eldest one was only 10) in a village in Meghalaya’s Tura district. A terrorist group known as Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA) which is demanding a separate land for the people of the Garo tribe claimed responsibility for the grotesque crime. The shocking news reminded me of a visit to the remote region of this border district in July 2011, when the Indian government initiated a free-trade economic programme with neighbouring Bangladesh. We were doing a story on this ‘Border Haat’ or Border Market. The hill folk of Tura seemed friendly and peaceful. Though we could not communicate with most of them because we did not understand each other’s languages, the men and women smiled so much that you came back with the sense that this was one place where people lived happily. Who would have known that they live under this sort of a threat? The terrorists claimed that the woman was a police informer, and denied the police claims that she had been killed resisting rape. What shocks and saddens me is that we cannot protect those who risk their lives to protect us from terrorist groups. The centre has sent 1000 paramilitary personnel to the area. But I shudder to think of the permanent psychological scars that the incident would have etched on the tender minds of the woman’s young children, as she was shot brutally in front of them, at point blank range with a barrage of AK-47 bullets that almost blew her head to pieces. The newspapers carried photos of all of them (the littlest one seemed to be just a toddler) with their father at her grave. The police have evacuated the family from their village, saying they remained under constant threats and pressure from the GNLA to give a press statement in favour of the outfit.