Eight people were also injured in the attacks.
A police spokesperson said heavily armed militants of the outlawed National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) fired at a bus near Bhoimari village in Sonitpur district, about 250 km north of Assam’s main city of Guwahati. They lined up the passengers and took away the Hindi-speaking people to the forest and shot them.
‘The NDFB fired at the bus, forcing the driver to stop, after which the militants lined up all the passengers on the road and took away at least 10 of them at gunpoint,’ a senior police official said.
There were about 25 people on board the private bus carrying Arunachal Pradesh government employees.
Police later recovered the bodies of eight people from a thickly wooded area close to the place where the bus was stopped.