Ccpur villager casts slur against AR Major
Source: The Sangai Express / S Singlianmang Guite

Lamka, December 06 2008: In an unprecedented turn of event with tell tale specimen of security excesses in the state's decades long insurgency history, an Assam Rifle Major allegedly made a villager of Jangnuam bite a bullet with a warning that he would fall a prey of it if their (AR)'s border post of Behiang was ever attacked again by the insurgents.

On November 29 a group of AR personnel under the command of one Major (identified as Poon/Pun) entered our village at around 12 noon and demanded that every head of the family from the nine households report to his camp at Behiang as most of the villagers were not in the village, said Vanlalruat (47), a man who bore the major brunt of the Major's wrath.

Head wounds suffered by Valalruat of Jangnuam village

Narrating his ordeal, Vanlalruat said seven people including him, reported to the AR camp at Behiang at around 7pm, as demanded.

There he was blind-folded by the Major in his office chamber and subjected to physical torture, including repeated slap on the face, a punch on his abdomen and a knock with a stool.

He was asked to confess that militants had meals in haste at their village before the AR post in their adjoining village of Behiang was attacked on October.

But when he dared his interrogators including a translator, to produce their source and to shoot him if they still doubt their duplicity, the cloth use for covering his eyes were removed, Vanlalruat claimed.

Yet the AR Major along with his translator made six of them, as one was let alone for being not in the village when their post was attacked, sit in a row.

Valalruat was then made to bite a bullet from an arch shaped magazine which was later used by the Major to bleed his head, right in front of his friends.

While making the forty-seven-year-old man bite the bullet, the major through his translator who spoke in Kuki, warned him and his friends of becoming a prey to their bullets if their post was ever attacked again without being informed.

Vanlalruat along with the village chief, some other villagers yesterday said he was hit with the arch shaped magazine thrice on his head bleeding him profusely and later attended by an Army doctor with some stitches.

The AR Major may have a sense of guilt as he was also accused of offering the villagers a bottle of drink before they were let off.

Terrified and anxious over the AR Major's threat of being a prey of the army's bullet if their post was ever attacked again without prior information from the villagers, the village chief of Jangnuam in Singngat sub-division told this correspondent, they were at a lost what to do.

"We were nervous even when we tried to enjoy the comfort of our homes, said Nengkhanmang, chief of Jangnuam, a tiny hamlet on the north-east of the border village of Behiang.

When asked, if they have ever cited the assailants during the attack on the AR post in October, the villagers responded in the negative.

"Why should we hesitate to tell the Army the truth if we actually saw them, the assailants were foreign elements to us, there is no point of protecting them," a villager said.