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Indian editor gunned down in restive northeast

March 26, 2009 00:00:00


GUWAHATI, (India), Mar 25 (AFP): Gunmen shot and killed the editor of a newspaper that supported government negotiations with militants in India's troubled northeastern state of Assam, police said Wednesday.
Anil Majumdar, editor of the daily newspaper Aji, was shot in the chest seven times outside his house late Tuesday in Assam's main city of Guwahati.
Majumdar had backed talks with the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), an ethnic guerrilla force that has fought for an independent homeland since 1979.
"He was returning from his office and was about to enter his residence when unidentified gunmen fired at him," senior police official G.P. Singh said.
The ULFA has been blamed for much of the violence in an insurgency that has killed more than 10,000 people in Assam in the the past two decades.
The killing comes days after the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said that reporters in South Asia were at "severe risk" due to increasing violence.

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