Members of All Assam Minority Student Union (AAMSU) took to streets on Monday to protest against the killing of 34 Muslims in Bodoland Territorial Area District (BTAD) area by tribal militants who resent the presence of immigrants from neighbouring Bangladesh.
At least 13 people were killed in attacks on Muslims in two villages in the area, taking the death toll from last week's violence to 34.
The protesters demanded actions by the state government against the tribal militants.
"We want that men should be treated as men. The way people were brutally killed in the BTAD areas, we want justice for them and the criminals should be brought to book," said an AAMSU member, Nurul Hussain.
A Muslim who had come to buy food in Barama, a town about 30 km from the villages in the Baksa district where the violence erupted on Thursday and Friday, said men armed with rifles had come to his village, Masalpur, on bicycles and had then fired indiscriminately and set huts on fire.
Suspected tribal rebels shot dead 22 Muslims in attacks in tea-growing state of Assam, where tension has run high during a drawn-out national election, officials said.
A dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed on last Friday and soldiers were deployed in the affected parts of Assam.
Security forces found the bodies of nine people with bullet wounds on last Saturday , six of them women and children. The police have blamed Bodo tribesmen for attacking Muslim settlers .
State police said the latest outbreak of violence seems to have been sparked by these local rivalries, with Bodo tribesmen attacking Muslim settlers as punishment for not supporting their parliamentary candidate in the election.
Bodo militants say the Muslims are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh who have taken ancestral lands, while members of the minority group say they were mostly born in India.
