JALPAIGURI: A police team from Kokrajhar in lower Assam entered West Bengal's Barovisha on Thursday and fired in the air after local residents prevented them from taking back 14 families to Assam, who had taken shelter there.
The incident triggered tension among local residents, which was defused only after senior Bengal police officers rushed to the spot.
The 14 families, from Assam's Dholadanga, had recently come to Barovisha's Pakuritala to take refuge from ethnic clashes back home.
Police from Kokrajhar reportedly came to Pakuritala on Thursday and forcibly tried to take these families back to Assam. But local residents put up a stiff resistance. This led to a heated exchange between them and the cops. The situation soon threatened to turned violent, and when the police team found they were getting cornered, they fired in the air reportedly 20 rounds to disperse the mob.
The incident, which occurred at 3 pm, soon triggered unrest among locals, who came down in large numbers on the roads to protest Assam police's interference in Bengal. Senior police officers, including North Bengal IGP K L Tamta and Jalpaiguri SP Anand Kumar, rushed to the spot. Extra forces had to be deployed.
Bengal police, though conceding that there had been trouble in Barovisha, said the Assam police team had come there to attend a meeting at Alipurduar regarding the election. "We had called them for a
meeting to discuss a joint policy for border patrolling during the Lok Sabha elections," Tamta said.
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