By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter
One person was killed and several injured on June 30 when Police opened fire at people demonstrating against ‘Doubt voter’ cases in Assam’s Goalpara district.
The person who died has been identified as 22-year-old Yakub Ali who was rushed to the hospital after suffering injuries from the police bullets. At the hospital, doctors declared him ‘brought dead’.
Nearly 500 people gathered at National Highway 37, at Kharubosa area of Goalpara district to oppose ‘D’ or doubtful voter cases. The protesters demanded that the problems of ‘D’ voter should be solved.
Police has said that the protest rally was organized without a necessary permission from the administration.
Goalpara SP Amitabh Singh told local media that police first tried to disperse the crowd by lathi-charge, but protesters re-grouped and started pelting stones at police and the vehicles at NH-37.
“Following that, Police resorted to firing which killed one person,” he added.
Sources inform that protesters had applied for administrative permission, but police denied it.
The cases of D-voters in many of the north-eastern states are frequent. To check on the illegal immigrants from neighboring countries, border police forces often mark people as D-voters. Often, border police ends up marking ordinary and legitimate Indian citizen as well in such cases of doubtful voters.
After being marked as D-voter, the accused must appear in the Foreigners’ tribunal with all the necessary documents to prove their Indian citizenship. With the frequency and abundance of D-voter cases, the process gets lengthy even as many as 100 foreigners’ tribunals are set up following the Supreme Court directive.
The majority of the victims of D-voter cases are Bengali Muslims who are often mistaken as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants.
Recently, a police constable too was listed as D-voter when local media and a lawyer came to the rescue of the same.
In Goalpara incident, sources inform that police had charged at protesters without much provocation. The question is raised on the police that why it directly resorted to firing of live bullets without using tear gas or rubber bullets at first.
A video of the incident posted by an eye-witness of the case Hussain Ahmad Madani is being shared widely, which clearly shows how police started tearing out banners and charging at the protesters without any provocation from the people’s side.