Bodo militants gunned down 20 people in the Bathani area of Panijani forest, 22km southeast of Gossaigaon town in Lower Assam's Kokrajhar district. All the victims belonged to the minority community. Assam chief secretary P.K. Bora told the victims were timber smugglers. "Such incidents had taken place earlier also. I would not like to attribute today's killings to the ongoing ethnic cleansing in the Bodo-dominated areas", he said. The outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland had recently issued diktats banning tree felling.