Anger against illegal Bangladeshi immigrants spills over to take rape accused person’s life
By A Ghyasuddin, TwoCircles.net,
A lot has been said by many but the fact remains that there was a serious breach of law and order by Nagaland government and the outcome was killing of an under trial rape accused in a most horrifying way for a modern world.
Even if Syed Sarif Khan was convicted of rape, I don’t think that this should be the way of punishment. The reality is that the anger of the mob was not just because he was a rapist but because he was a ‘foreigner’ from Bangladesh. This is what was projected by the activists and organisations in Dimapur that Khan was an Illegal Bangladeshi Immigrant (IBI).
Thousands of people gathered near the City Tower, where the mob first lynched a rape accused and then hung him to death. Earlier, he was paraded naked in the streets by the large number of protestors after he was pulled out from police premises. (file photo)
The reason being simple that is not the lone rape case in Dimapur. Though the rape is not yet confirmed by the authorities, the people were mobilized through social media and other ways that a ‘Bangladeshi’ has raped a Naga girl.
At the same time, the district administration has to take the blame for failing to stop the mob to break jail to take out the accused and kill him.
Though the district administration officials, even the DGP, have changed their views now, I have seen them clearly mentioning Khan as a suspected Bangladeshi national. This is again a serious crime as only a court of law has the authority to decide on a person’s nationality.
May be this term ‘Bangladeshi’ has led to this incident. Even several national media have used the term of suspected Bangladeshi, which is pretty unfortunate.
The tragedy is that Khan was so easily termed as a suspected Bangladeshi just because he was a Bengali speaking Muslim. This sounds a bit harsh but it is a reality. Thank God, his father and a brother served in the Indian Army besides another two brothers still serving in the army. This saved him from further humiliation.
As far as the rape is concerned, so far no one is sure till the medical report is made public. Even Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has asked his Nagaland counterpart to make it public at the earliest.
Khan, a second hand vehicle dealer, has been in Dimapur for the last two decades and had married a girl of Sumi Naga tribe. They also have a daughter. And the girl who lodged the complaint happens to be a distant cousin of his wife.
Khan’s younger brother Suber Uddin Khan said the girl was even known to their family and visited their home in Karimganj.
Even the CCTV visuals of the hotel suggests that both of them entered and gone out of the hotel in a ‘friendly’ manner. Many suspect that Khan was having an affair with that girl.
If really Khan had committed rape, he deserved fitting punishment and criticism. Dimapur is one of the prominent commercial places of the region and, with no Inner Line Permit (ILP) is needed, access for the outsiders is much easier to this place than the rest of the state.
Over the years, a lot of businessmen especially, Bengali speaking Muslims, and other non-Naga people have thronged Dimapur. One of the prime accusations against the outsiders, especially some Muslim traders, is that they stay back marrying local girls. This helps the non-Naga Muslim traders to own property in Nagaland.
There was an apprehension among the locals as this trend was growing for last several years so much so it has given rise to a new Naga ‘tribe’ called Sumiya – born out of legitimate marriages between Sema or Sumi (Naga tribe) and Bengali-speaking Muslim men called Miya.
This also prompted the Naga Students’ Federation (NSF) to launch a movement against this. It further increased when the Naga youths realized that the non-locals are dominating the Dimapur market.
But then, nobody has the right to threaten or kill people just for that. You have to compete and showcase your talent. Every Indian has the right to do business or work in any corner of the country just like in Guwahati or in New Delhi.
Another crucial point is that people in general in Nagaland think that every Bengali speaking person is a Bangladeshi.
The law and order is almost non-existence in Dimapur with so many insurgent groups and the criminals. “Three splinter groups of once outlawed National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), two others of Naga National Council (NNC), and the state government run the show here. The last named outfit does not wield any real power nor does it want to get on the wrong side of the five other powerful ‘authorities’ in the scene,” Nurul Islam Laskar, a journalist based in Guwahati, who served in Nagaland as an employee of State Bank of India for several years during 1990s, told me.
It is also known as a hub of crime and criminals. “Before I ventured into the world of media, I was an officer with the State Bank of India. During 1993-94, I was posted at the Dimapur Regional Office. One fine morning, a phone call comes to the Regional Manager of the Bank to pay up Rs one crore to NSCN or face consequences. SBI decides not to bow down to the extortion demand. The Regional Office and 35 branches of SBI operating in Nagaland shut down and they remained that way for over a month. This kind of things can happen only in Nagaland and I don’t think anywhere else in the country,” said Laskar.
Another crucial point, which many seem to have skipped is, if Khan was a rapist or a criminal, why were the business establishments belonging to Bengali speaking Muslims in Dimapur attacked and vandalised?
These are few signs to understand the reality that Khan was a victim of a greater conspiracy barring the fact that he may or may not be a rape convict.
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