Rashida Begum was just eight years old when the Nellie massacre took place on February 18, 1983. “They surrounded people on all sides and chased them to one side. They shot arrows; some had guns. This is how they killed people. Some had their neck cut, some had been attacked on their chest,” she remembers.
That day, in a span of six hours that day, thousands of Muslims of Bengal origin were killed in Nellie (or Neli) area in central Assam. Rashida, ‘Rumi’ at home, survived the massacre. But she witnessed all her four younger sisters die and her mother getting badly injured. “They attacked me with a jadi [spear], and shot me in the waist. A bullet pierced my leg” she recalls.
— source ruralindiaonline.org | Feb. 18, 2023