In a letter to the Chief Justice of the Gauhati High Court, the mother of a 19 year old Muslim youth killed in police firing at Goalpara, Assam, urged an independent judicial probe, describing the incident as “an unprovoked, excessive, and disproportionate use of arms by the police officials.”
Nachiran Bibi, mother of Sakowar Ali, and a resident of Ashudubi village, wrote, “We have lost trust in the police authorities to conduct an impartial investigation. Therefore, I am requesting your lordships to order an independent judicial probe into the police firing.”
She also alleged that after the post-mortem, the police took her son’s body to Kismatpur Kabrsthan in Goalpara for burial, even though the family had wanted the burial to take place at Kharidhara Kabrsthan in Krishnai.
“The police refused, saying that the burial could not happen anywhere in Krishnai. We were compelled to comply with the police instructions under stressful circumstances,” she said in a letter dated on August 4th.
According to the letter, the family has been served with an eviction notice by Forest Department officials despite having lived there for the last seven decades. On July 10, 2025, the rooftop structure of their home was removed. However, on July 12, 2025, the police demolished the homes in the village.
“That on July 17, 2025, at around 7 a.m., some of the evicted people were still on the village land in Ashudubi, staying in tents, and were trying to find a place to relocate,” she wrote, alleging that around the same time, forest officials, accompanied by Assam Police personnel, arrived and “began cutting off the connecting road to the village (Ashudubi to Khardang Road) with a JCB.”
She said this was “the only road linking the village to the rest of the area, so blocking it would have caused tremendous hardship” for those preparing to move.
“As a result, the local elders requested the police not to block the road,” but the police and forest officials refused, leading to a verbal argument, she said, adding that soon a crowd gathered, and “my sons, Sakowar Ali and Noser Ali, also went there out of curiosity.”
She alleged that the police then “resorted to a lathi charge and opened fire on the crowd.”
Nineteen-year-old Sakowar Ali, a grocery vendor, sustained bullet injuries above his neck and died on the spot. Others, including two adults and a 12-year-old child, suffered serious upper-body injuries.
This came after the state government had evicted 1,080 families from 140 hectares of forest land.
Leader of Opposition, Rahul Gandhi labeled the evictions as “state-sponsored fire” and accused the BJP-led government of clearing land for industrialists like Adani and Ambani rather than for public welfare.
The Assam government’s eviction drives in June and July 2025, which displaced over 3,500 families across four districts, Goalpara, Dhubri, Nalbari, and Lakhimpur, have been widely criticized as targeting Bengali-origin Muslim communities.
These operations, conducted under the pretext of clearing “illegal encroachments” on government and forest land, have disproportionately affected Muslim families, with reports estimating that the majority of the evicted were Bengali-speaking Muslims.
