The Brus living in Tripura’s North district on Friday requested the authorities to organise a peace meeting to clarify that no displaced person from the district’s six camps was engaged in the violence that occurred on December 10 after an anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protest in Kanchanpur subdivision.

A letter written to district magistrate Ravel H. Kumar and signed by Mizoram Bru Displaced People’s Forum president A. Sawibunga said, “Thousands of people from different social and political organisations have launched agitation against the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill. In Kanchanpur subdivision too, the indigenous tribal residents joined such a protest, which resulted in minor incidents between tribal and non-tribal people in some places. Taking advantage of the movement, the non-tribal people in Kanchanpur subdivision manipulated the issue and blamed the displaced Brus. These allegations became viral in media.”

The letter urged the authority to immediately organise a peace meeting, in which the displaced Brus would participate, at Gachirampara, near one of the Bru camps in Kanchanpur, to clear the misunderstanding and deliberate on other issues between the displaced Brus and non-tribal community.

On December 16, Susanta Barua, secretary of Unnayan Manch, a civil society group, had claimed that after the Brus came to Tripura in 1997, communal clashes had started in the subdivision. He demanded that the Bru refugees be sent back to from where they came.

The Forum’s general secretary Bruno Msha told The Telegraph on Saturday, “…our Bengali brothers made false allegations against the displaced Brus of destroying houses and ransacking shops of the non-tribal community at Anandabazar and being involved in communal clashes in Kanchanpur during the protest.” He requested a face-to-face peace meeting for these misunderstandings to be cleared.

When contacted, Kanchanpur police station officer-in-charge Paritosh Das said the situation was peaceful now.

“After the clash on December 10, many families took shelter in camps across the subdivision. The situation is improving. They have left the camps for their homes. However, tension prevails. An FIR has been filed against 26 unknown persons and we are collecting CCTV footage to check whether Bru people were engaged in it or not,” he said.