Guwahati, Nov 4 (PTI): Opposition parties in Assam on Wednesday questioned the killing of the prime accused in the Guwahati hotel firing incident in police firing, maintaining that criminals should be brought to justice through the judicial process and not “encounters”.
They said the accused should have been tried in court and awarded exemplary punishment for his crime.
Meanwhile, CRPF Director General G P Singh, who formerly served as the Assam DGP, made an apparent reference to the incident in a cryptic social media post, invoking Newton’s third law of motion, which states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Ghanakanta Gogoi (34) was killed in police firing in Sivasagar district early Wednesday while allegedly attempting to escape from custody, a senior police officer said.
Gogoi, the leaseholder of Guwahati’s Hotel Bilas Inn, had opened fire on six people inside the hotel premises on October 26 following a purported dispute with the property’s owners.
Five of those shot, including four members of the family that owned the hotel, were killed. Gogoi was arrested soon after the incident, and a licensed .32-bore pistol allegedly used in the crime was seized from his possession.
A Guwahati court remanded him to jail following the completion of his seven-day police on Tuesday, with Sivasagar police arresting Gogoi almost immediately afterwards in connection with a 2024 bank fraud case. He was being taken to Sivasagar for further investigation when police opened fire after he allegedly attempted to escape from custody, officials said.
Raijor Dal MLA Akhil Gogoi, who was travelling to his constituency Sivasagar, spoke to reporters at the site of the incident.
“Ghanakanta Gogoi was a professional killer, we can call him a terrorist. Him dying to a bullet has nothing to feel bad about per se,” he said.
“However, I don’t support encounters. He had no right to live, but we would have preferred if he had faced justice through due process,” the MLA said.
Akhil Gogoi also pointed out that the accused was killed while in custody in connection with a fraud case. “We were all hoping that he would get capital punishment for the hotel firing. But now, he has died in a fraud case,” he said.
Senior Congress leader and former Leader of Opposition in the Assam Assembly Debabrata Saikia said all encounters and extra-judicial killings were against the law and that the judiciary should be allowed to decide the punishment for accused persons.
He also claimed that there were rumours that Gogoi was a contract killer allegedly used as a front by an influential person to take over the business of the owners of Hotel Bilas Inn.
“Gogoi wanted to speak to the media while in custody, but police prevented him. With his death, many aspects won’t come to light now,” Saikia said.
Meanwhile, CRPF DG Singh’s social media post drew attention to previous instances in Assam in which accused persons were killed or injured in police firing while allegedly attempting to escape from custody.
“The relevance of Newton’s third law remains undiminished in Assam. Keep it up @assampolice,” Singh wrote.
He also shared his post of December 1, 2021, which stated: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction – Newton’s Third Law.”
Singh, who was then the special DGP (law and order) of Assam, had made the earlier post on the day the prime accused in the lynching of a student leader in Jorhat was killed while allegedly attempting to escape from police custody.
According to data placed before the Assam Assembly by Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who also holds the Home portfolio, at least 72 people were killed and more than 220 injured in police action in the state between May 10, 2021, and February 23, 2025.
Sarma had assumed office as chief minister on May 10, 2021.
Out of these incidents, no magisterial inquiry has been conducted in as many as 81 incidents, while probe was carried out in 175 cases across the state.
The government, however, registered police cases for each of the incidents under relevant laws and as per guidelines of the National Human Rights Commission.
A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) alleging fake encounters by Assam Police was filed in the Supreme Court by advocate Arif Md Yeasin Jwadder in 2023, after the Gauhati High Court dismissed his petition on the issue that year.
The petitioner had sought an independent investigation into 171 alleged fake encounters in Assam between May 2021 and August 2022, in which 56 people were killed, including four in custody, and 145 were injured.
In its May 2025 order, the Supreme Court directed the Assam Human Rights Commission to conduct inquiries into all 171 incidents.
Thursday, November 5, 2026