Unknown miscreants bombed a lower primary school on the Assam-Mizoram border late Friday night, triggering another tensions after a brief lull.
Officials in southern Assam’s Hailakandi district said the Paka Punjee LP School was partially damaged in the explosion. The Assam government-run school is under the Gutguti outpost of the State police and is aerially less than a kilometre from Dhaleswari River, the “natural” inter-State boundary.
“A wall of the school building was partially damaged. The locals heard the explosion about 11:30 p.m. and informed the police,” Hailakandi Superintendent of Police Gaurav Upadhyay said. “There was no major damage to property, but we are seriously investigating the attack,” he added.
The incident came just hours after Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told the State Assembly on Friday that Mizoram had agreed to the “1932 boundary” when it became a Union Territory in 1972 as well as a State in 1987. Assam insists on the “constitutional boundary” agreed upon in 1972 while Mizoram wants the inter-State boundary to be retro-defined by a notification in 1875.
The Paka Punjee school was the fourth Assam-run school on the border to have been bombed since October 2020. Two of these schools are in Cachar district and two in Hailakandi.
Conflicts on the Assam-Mizoram border have been fairly regular since the mid-1990s. The situation took a violent turn on July 26 when clashes resulted in the death of six Assam police personnel dead and injuries to more than 40 others, including a Superintendent of Police.