Nellie Massacre Report finally to be made public in Assam Assembly
In a significant move, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced that after 42 years of the Nellie Massacre in Assam, his government has decided to table the Justice Tribhuvan Prasad Tiwari Commission Report in the Assembly on November 25. On February 18, 1983, more than 3,000 Bengali-speaking Muslims were killed in the massacre during the height of the Assam agitation, also known as the anti-foreigners’ movement, at the Nellie region of Nagaon district.
Pointing out that successive governments were hesitant in tabling the report as the report did not have the signature of Justice Tiwari, the Chief Minister said that many governments failed to conclude if the report was “genuine or fake” as it was not signed by Mr Tiwari. “We have interviewed the clerks and the secretaries who were involved in the preparation of the report, followed by a forensic test. We concluded that the report is genuine,” said Sarma on Thursday evening, addressing the media on the cabinet decision.
Observing that many historians and social scientists have presented the report in different ways, the Chief Minister said that publication of the report would let people know the facts and exactly what happened at that time. “There was a need to take a bold step. We thought we should table it in the Assembly since it is a part of Assam’s history,” the Chief Minister said. The violence that had rocked the nation allegedly raged through the night across Muslim villages at Nellie, which was then in central Assam’s Nagaon district.
In 1985 the Tiwari Commission submitted its findings to the then government on the 1983 Nellie Massacre.
Today the Assam Cabinet has decided to place this report on the floor of the Assam Assembly, so its facts can be made available to the public. pic.twitter.com/MW3rbttV8a
— Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) October 23, 2025
The then Congress government headed by Hiteswar Saikia had constituted the Tiwari Commission to investigate the causes and circumstances of the tragedy, considered one of the darkest chapters in Assam’s history. The decision to table the Tewari Commission report has also come close on the heels of a massive eviction drive being carried out by the BJP-led government targeting the Bengali-speaking Muslims in Assam. The Assembly elections are scheduled in April-May 2026.
While the 600-page report was submitted to the Assam government in May 1984, its contents have been suppressed by successive governments. This, in turn, had attracted widespread criticism because it denied justice to the victims. It is widely believed that the Commission has given three copies of the report to the government.
The Nellie massacre of February 18, 1983, was the most violent flashpoint of the Assam agitation against illegal migration from Bangladesh, taking place over several hours. Hindu tribals got agitated over the Mulsim infiltration, leading to rape, stealing of cows, violence, and ultimately ending up in counterattacks. The official death toll was 1,800 – mostly Bengali-origin Muslims – but the unofficial figure is more than 3,000. While 668 FIRs were registered in relation to the violence in a period of two months following it, nobody was arrested.
Tiwari Commission was mandated to “look into the circumstances leading to the disturbances which took place in Assam during January to April 1983, to examine the measures taken by the concerned authorities to anticipate, prevent and deal with these disturbances, to indicate whether there were any failures by any authority or individual, and to suggest measures to prevent recurrence of such incidents in future”. While the report was submitted in May 1984, it was never tabled or made public.
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