When Suredra Paul, owner of the Apeejay group and brother of UK-based Swraj Paul, was brutally murdered by militants in Assam near Chabua on May 9 1990, my wife and I almost heard the gunshots because we lived only a few kilometers away from the scene at Doom Dooma.
Later we came to know that the murder was done with a weapon called AK-47 and any 'idiot' could operate it with ease and that it was easily and cheaply available in Assam.
I still remember that eerie afternoon. Luckily we did not see any AK-47 while we lived there. It seems as of today the rifle has killed more people than any other firearm in the world!
In the wee hours of November 8 1990, we were asked to leave our tea-garden homes, with as little baggage as possible, on a gun-mounted Indian military truck before being airlifted from Sookerting airfield- almost never used for nondefense purpose- in an Indian Airlines Boeing flight to dodge the bullets of Ulfa's AK-47's.
courtesy: Frontline dated December 8-21 1990
(I knew well all the employees from the picture above and the late Mr. Deepak Sen lived in the bungalow above.
By the way, the cars were not "abandoned" by any definition of that word. They were parked in the head office because the military convoy carrying us started from that point. Managing Director was NOT evacuated with us. He was already in Kolkata.)
A lot of blood has since been shed in the streets of India.
Mikhail Kalashnikov, credited with creating the AK-47, the most popular assault rifle in history, died at age 94 on December 23 2013.
Nigel Fountain writes in the Guardian while reviewing Michael Hodges's 'AK47: The Story of the People's Gun', on July 28 2007:
"...With 650 rounds pumped out a minute, Kalashnikov's cheap and cheerless, charismatic assembly of tube and wood has, with added global trickle-down, put mass slaughter inside the budgets of ordinary Joes - and Abdullahs and Reiks - everywhere..."
Not just Joes, Abdullahs and Reiks but also Baruah's, Singh's, Prabhakaran's...
Artist: Tome Toles, July 2009
Later we came to know that the murder was done with a weapon called AK-47 and any 'idiot' could operate it with ease and that it was easily and cheaply available in Assam.
I still remember that eerie afternoon. Luckily we did not see any AK-47 while we lived there. It seems as of today the rifle has killed more people than any other firearm in the world!
In the wee hours of November 8 1990, we were asked to leave our tea-garden homes, with as little baggage as possible, on a gun-mounted Indian military truck before being airlifted from Sookerting airfield- almost never used for nondefense purpose- in an Indian Airlines Boeing flight to dodge the bullets of Ulfa's AK-47's.
courtesy: Frontline dated December 8-21 1990
(I knew well all the employees from the picture above and the late Mr. Deepak Sen lived in the bungalow above.
By the way, the cars were not "abandoned" by any definition of that word. They were parked in the head office because the military convoy carrying us started from that point. Managing Director was NOT evacuated with us. He was already in Kolkata.)
A lot of blood has since been shed in the streets of India.
Mikhail Kalashnikov, credited with creating the AK-47, the most popular assault rifle in history, died at age 94 on December 23 2013.
Nigel Fountain writes in the Guardian while reviewing Michael Hodges's 'AK47: The Story of the People's Gun', on July 28 2007:
"...With 650 rounds pumped out a minute, Kalashnikov's cheap and cheerless, charismatic assembly of tube and wood has, with added global trickle-down, put mass slaughter inside the budgets of ordinary Joes - and Abdullahs and Reiks - everywhere..."
Not just Joes, Abdullahs and Reiks but also Baruah's, Singh's, Prabhakaran's...
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