Exodus Over, North Easterns are returning back to Bangalore

North East Exodus 2012North east People are now returning back to Bangalore  and other cities in South from where they fled after rumours of attacks on them. With Government promising every bit of security and assurance of local people, the North Easterns are willing to make their way back.

Ujjal Baruah, Rayi Kurmi, Deepak Barman, Prasanta Bhattachjarya and Rumi Borthakur are among an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people who fled Bangalore alone and returned to their native towns in Assam.
“Once we reached here and looked back at the happenings of the past few days, we realise that there was nothing serious. Maybe we should have stayed back,” said Borthakur.

This thought also played on the minds of those who returned to Arunachal Pradesh.

“We don’t know about our future. Perhaps we could have stayed back,” lamented Techi Boje, a security guard of a private farm in Hyderabad, who reached Itanagar three days ago.

Most say they chose to flee as they did not want to “take any risk” though they themselves did not come across any kind of violence.

Minam Tondrang, first year student of Sridevi Engineering Institute at Bangalore who reached Itanagar this morning, said “There is no concrete proof of any attack on people from the Northeastas, but I don’t want to take risk so I decided to leave Bangalore.”

“I had decided not to move out of Bangalore but my parents forced me to come. Everything is calm in the city and there is no need to panic. But how can I convince my parents?” said Prince Zungrang Lingphi, another first year engineering student from Bangalore.

“On August 13, my roommate Sharmila Bora and I received a text message each from unidentified numbers. We were asked to leave because of what was happening in Assam,” said Rumi Borthakur, who hails from Nagaon in central Assam.

She and her friend Bora both study in a private institute in Bangalore.

A spokesperson for the Northeast Frontier Railway, Nripen Bhattacharya, said here that three special trains had left for Bangalore yesterday taking back those who had left.

He, however, could not give the exact number of people returning to Bangalore.

Government officials said it would take two to three days before all of them returned to the Karnataka capital and other cities.

“Today we also ran a special train from Kamakhya station in Guwahati to Dibrugarh for those passengers who are from upper Assam. The train left at 12.45pm,” Bhattacharya said.

The Kamakhya-Dibrugarh special was for those who reached Guwahati from Bangalore and other places in two special trains this morning and had to go to upper Assam as part of their onward journey.

Special train services have been suspended from Bangalore by the South Western Railway on Saturday.