Assam Jogdal massacre: Rights body urges NHRC intervention after 16 years of inaction
Guwahati: Sixteen years after a brutal mass killing wiped out an entire family in Jogdal village of Assam’s Kamrup Metropolitan district, a local civic body has moved the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) seeking renewed intervention and accountability.
The Dimoria Bikash Manch has submitted a petition to NHRC chairperson Justice V. R. Rama Subramanian, urging the Commission to examine what it described as serious human rights violations and prolonged investigative failures in the case.
The organisation has sought a fresh, independent, and time-bound probe to deliver justice to the victims’ families.
Chief adviser of the Manch, Dibyajyoti Medhi, who filed the petition on Saturday, said representatives met an NHRC member and formally handed over the plea.
According to Medhi, the Commission assured them that it would examine the matter.
Highlighting the long wait for justice, Medhi said the victims belonged to an economically weak family with no known personal or communal disputes. Harakanta Doloi, one of the deceased, earned his livelihood as a marginal farmer, making the motive behind the killings even more disturbing.
In its submission, the Manch alleged that investigators deliberately compromised the initial probe due to the suspected involvement of a former Assam minister. The Congress governed the state at the time of the incident in 2009. The petition accused Sonapur police of conducting a biased and careless investigation, and claimed that crucial evidence was destroyed, including the alleged burning of the victims’ house after the murders.
The organisation also flagged the death of a key accused, Arjun Bordoloi, under unexplained circumstances in September 2012, which it said further cast doubts on the credibility of the investigation.
The massacre occurred on the night of December 12, 2009, when unidentified attackers hacked to death Harakanta Doloi, his wife Swapna, their three children and a nephew inside their home in Jogdal village. Investigators later suspected that the killings were linked to attempts by influential individuals to acquire land in the area for a proposed luxury hotel project, though the perpetrators remain at large.
Authorities later transferred the case to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). In December 2017, police arrested two officers — Pranab Kumar Deka, then officer-in-charge of Sonapur police station, and A. M. Choudhury, the investigating officer — on charges of destroying evidence to protect those responsible for the crime. The state government subsequently handed the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in 2018.
Despite years of protests and repeated appeals by local ethnic and social groups, the Manch alleged that authorities failed to take decisive action. In its plea, the organisation urged the NHRC to intervene decisively, ensure accountability for both the crime and the alleged cover-up, and restore faith in the justice system by delivering closure to the victims’ families.