Nellie massacre

The Nellie massacre took place in central Assam during a six-hour period on the morning of 18 February 1983. The massacre claimed the lives of 3000 people from 14 villages—Alisingha, Khulapathar, Basundhari, Bugduba Beel, Bugduba Habi, Borjola, Butuni, Dongabori, Indurmari, Mati Parbat, Muladhari, Mati Parbat no. 8, Silbheta, Borburi and Nellie—of Nagaon district. The victims were people of Bengali Muslim descent. Three media personnel—Hemendra Narayan of The Indian Express, Bedabrata Lahkar of The Assam Tribune, and Sharma of ABC—were witnesses. The death toll was notably high among children, women, and the elderly, who were unable to flee the attackers. Bodies were strewn across fields and in some instances, whole families were killed. The victims were called foreigners, or even Bangladeshis, despite the fact that the majority of them had been living there since the 1930s.

The violence that took place in Nellie by natives—mostly rural peasants—was seen as a fallout of the decision to hold the controversial state elections in 1983 in the midst of the Assam Agitation, after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's decision to give four million Bengali Muslims the right to vote. It has been described as one of the worst pogroms since World War II and one of the deadliest pogroms against a minority community in post partition India.