The Bagber massacre was a massacre of unarmed Bengali Hindu on 20 May 2000 by

NLFT The National Liberation Front of Tripura ( abbreviated NLFT) is a Tripuri nationalist militant organisation based in Tripura, India. It has an estimated 550 to 850 members. The NLFT seeks to secede from India and establish an independent Tr ...

(National Liberation Front of Tripura) militants. 25 ethnic

Bengali Hindus Bengali Hindus ( bn, বাঙ্গালী হিন্দু/বাঙালি হিন্দু, translit=Bāṅgālī Hindu/Bāṅāli Hindu) are an ethnoreligious population who make up the majority in the Indian states of West Benga ...

were killed as they were fleeing the Bagber refugee camp.

Background

Bagber is a village under the Kalyanpur police station in West Tripura district of

Tripura Tripura (, Bengali: ) is a state in Northeast India. The third-smallest state in the country, it covers ; and the seventh-least populous state with a population of 36.71 lakh ( 3.67 million). It is bordered by Assam and Mizoram to the east a ...

. It is located in West Ghilatali, approximately 1 km from the police station. In May 2000, during the ongoing ethnic riots scores of

had taken shelter at a refugee camp in Bagber. The camp was located at the Niranjan Sardarpara Senior Basic School.

Events

On 20 May, at around 5 P.M. a heavily armed group of around 60

militants raided the Bagber village. They hurled grenade at the house of Ajoy Ghose, the local CPI(M) leader. At the news of the attack, the refugees who had taken shelter adjacent to the Niranjan Sardarpara School, began to flee towards Kanchanpur. Seeing the refugees fleeing, the NLFT militants turned their guns on them. Three refugees were killed instantly. The militants then targeted the inmates at the refugee camp, where they killed sixteen and injured several others. The CRPF personnel deployed at Bagber didn't protest when the massacre took place. 19 Bengali Hindus were killed on the spot and several others were critically injured in the massacre. Six of them succumbed to their injuries later.

Aftermath

On 21 May, at around 11a.m., suspected NLFT rebels killed three Bengali Hindus at Ratia-Durgapur under Kalyanpur police station. After that the rebels set fire to several houses. 333 families were relocated from five Gram Panchayats of Kalyanpur after the massacre and settled in Amar Colony under North Kalyanpur Gram Panchayat. Each of the families were promised 24 tins and 2,000 rupees cash to build their homes. However, they were not entitled to avail any loan from the North Kalyanpur Gram Panchayat.

References

{{coord missing, Tripura 20th-century mass murder in India Massacres in India 2000 in India Massacres of Bengali Hindus in India Ethnic cleansing in Asia History of Tripura (1947–present) Crime in Tripura Terrorist incidents in India in 2000 May 2000 events in India Christian terrorism in Asia