Assam CRPF camp shooting: Sub-inspector kills two colleagues, then himself
New Delhi: An assistant sub-inspector of the Central Reserve Police Force shot dead two of his colleagues and critically wounded a third before turning his weapon on himself at a camp in Assam’s Nagaon district on Tuesday morning. The shooting, which took place around 7am at the 34 Battalion camp in Katimari, has triggered a joint inquiry by Assam Police and the paramilitary force.
The accused has been identified as assistant sub-inspector Ballani Premabaram, a native of Andhra Pradesh who was posted on main-gate duty at the time. According to the Nagaon senior superintendent of police, Partha Protim Das, Premabaram was found without his assigned service weapon while on duty that morning.
He is then said to have picked up an Insas rifle from the camp’s guard room and made his way to the rear of the quarter guard. It was there, officials said, that he opened fire on his colleagues without warning.
Vishnu Prasad Baghel, a head constable, was the first to be hit and succumbed to his injuries shortly afterwards. Premabaram then fired on Ramnawal Singh Yadav, a sub-inspector, who had travelled from Lucknow for document verification and died at the scene.
A third CRPF man, Govind Sripul, an assistant sub-inspector, was also caught in the firing and suffered serious gunshot wounds. He was rushed to a private hospital in Nagaon before being referred to Gauhati Medical College and Hospital for further treatment.
Having fired on all three men, Premabaram walked into the B/171 barrack and shot himself. He was pronounced dead at the spot.
The Nagaon deputy superintendent of police (headquarters), Paramita Sarkar, confirmed the sequence of events to reporters and said senior CRPF and police officers had rushed to the camp soon after. An inquiry has been ordered, and investigators from both the force and the state police are now working to establish what drove Premabaram to the attack.
Some reports have suggested that an internal altercation preceded the shooting, though this has not been officially confirmed. The precise trigger for the violence remains under investigation, and the force is yet to issue a formal statement on the matter.
No isolated incident
Tuesday’s incident is not an isolated one. Fratricidal violence and self-harm among paramilitary personnel have surfaced repeatedly in recent years, often linked by investigators and commentators to prolonged separation from family, gruelling duty rotations and unresolved internal disputes.
In February 2025, a CRPF havildar opened fire at a camp in Manipur’s Imphal West district, killing a constable and a sub-inspector and injuring eight others before killing himself. In July 2020, a CRPF sub-inspector shot dead an inspector during an argument at a Delhi residential colony before turning the weapon on himself.
Chhattisgarh, where the CRPF maintains a heavy presence for anti-Naxal operations, has recorded a particularly troubling toll. State government data placed before the Chhattisgarh assembly showed 177 security personnel died by suicide in the state between 2019 and mid-2025, of whom 26 belonged to the CRPF alone.
Mental health professionals and force veterans have long argued that easy access to automatic weapons, combined with the psychological strain of paramilitary deployment, makes such episodes especially lethal when personal or professional friction goes unaddressed.
