Aizawl, July 10 (PTI): The six Bru relief camps in Tripura should be closed and assistance provided to the inmates there should be stopped if the Brus continue to refuse to return to Mizoram, an adviser of the Ministry of Home Affairs said.
An official release here said that Ministry of Home Affairs Adviser (North East) M K Singla expressed this opinion while meeting Mizoram Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla. However, this is his personal opinion, the release said. The MHA and the Mizoram government had made a number of plans to repatriate the Brus from Tripura since 2009.
However, a number of Bru families refused to return to Mizoram and the Mizoram Bru Displaced People’s Forum, the apex body of the Bru refugees in the relief camps, continued to make fresh and series of demands till date. Singla proposed that a time-bound repatriation process should be undertaken to ensure that all the Brus return to Mizoram from the relief camps.
He alleged that some Bru leaders have been misguiding the inmates of the relief camps. Brus migrated en masse to Tripura after Bru militants gunned down a forest guard inside the Dampa Tiger Reserve on October 21, 1997 and many of them remained in the relief camps while hundreds of families have returned during government-sponsored repatriation and also on their own will.
