The spine-chilling incident of brutal killing of five innocent villagers in the name of witches in the year 2000 in Thaigarguri village stirred the conscience of law-enforcing agencies and demonstrated  their helplessness in preventing such happenings. These problems are accentuated by terrorist elements to their benefit due to inhospitable  and socially isolated terrain which keep police at bay. 

Shri Kuladhar Saikia, an official of Indian Police Service, who just joined in August, 2001 as Deputy Inspector General of Police, in the Western Range, had made critical and objective analysis of these phenomena  and conceptualized an approach to Community Policing which would hit at the root cause of the social malady so that the law enforcement agency can play a major role in preventing recurrence of such incidents.

This is the birth of the initiative called Project PRAHARI which is an acronym for " People for Progress" in local language. With the initial success at  Kokrajhar, the Project has spread to other villages after Shri Harekrishna Deka, DGP, Assam Police declared it to be a state level initiative.
Now every police district under this Project is selecting at least a village which may be either crime infested or communally sensitive or terrorist prone or may be a village which is socially underprivileged. As crimes and terrorist violence as a result of acute poverty and social ignorance have been affecting the daily policing in this part of land such initiative has given immense potential to other public agencies to learn and adopt such system of community participation and decision making in solving the day to day problems afflicting the lives of under developed and backward communities.