Members of the Bodo National Students’ Union (BoNSU) performed the traditional Bagurumba dance at a police station, here, while they were in detention.

Some 300 members of the group were held by police after request for permission for their rally was “rejected” just as it begun around noon on Jantar Mantar Road today.

Police and CRPF took them in buses to the Mandir Marg police station—where they were kept in a courtyard for more than eight hours. “There are 46 women students, and they decided to perform the Bagurumba in front of the police in the style we derive from our folklore as an expression of our resistance,” the group’s assistant general secretary Hem Chandra Brahma told The Telegraph.

BoNSU was formed in Kokrajhar in February to revive to demand for statehood, release of prisoners, and end forced evictions of Bodo tribals in Assam’s Bodoland Territorial Area.

The group has clashed with the dominant All Bodo Students’ Union which accuses the former of being backed by the Bodoland People’s Front-- the main opposition to the ruling BJP-backed North-East Democratic Alliance in the Bodoland Territorial Council.