Editorial
Mayhem in Aborigine Village
We find no word strong enough to deprecate the atrocities
committed by armed hooligans upon the Santhals of village Vimpur at
Mohadevpur upazilla under Naogaon district. It is all the more condemnable
owing to a manifest lack of action on the part of the police or the local
administrative authority to prevent it happening despite their having
prior knowledge of a situation developing over a land expropriation bid by
some vested quarters. The latter were seeking to evict the aborigines from
a land. They had reportedly made their home for the last 15-years, on the
pretext that it was a property abandoned by a Hindu landlord, a vested
property, so to speak. In their land-grabbing greed the local influentials
showed total disregard for the sensibilities of an ethnic minority which
deserved to be treated with respect especially when these related to their
habitat touching upon their fundamental right to live.
It appears that documents were forged by the terrorist godfathers
Sitesh Chandra and former UP Chairman Hatem to fake a claim on the land
which has been in continuous possession of the 19 santhal families. For
the last two years the terror leaders had used hired goondas to raid the
aborigine village with casualties inflicted on the tribals. The latter
went to the police and even filed cases but to no avail, because the
police neither charge-sheeted the accused nor made any arrests.
But the barbarity that the aborigines were subjected to last Saturday
has surpassed previous records: the armed hirelings surrounded the village
in broad daylight with their godfathers Sitesh and Hatem ordering the
aborigines to huddle under the same roof which they did. Thereupon the
house was set ablaze and as Biswanath and Jagannath wobbled out of the
inferno they were put to flame and critically injured. Then tribal leader
Alfred was caught while fleeing and chopped to death amidst chants of
'victory'! Wounds were inflicted on several men and women. After the
police came to know of the mayhem through a tribal errand boy, they
reached the spot four and a half hours later, only to see wreckage.
Despite the known notoriety of Sitesh and Hatem nothing was done to
neutralise them in time.
Ethnic minority has a high place in our Constitution, philosophy and
national ethos. What happened at Vimpur is a big shame to our civilised
sensibilities. This was in ironic contrast to the Decade of Aborigines we
are observing under the UN auspices. We want the atrocious tendency
towards minority oppression nipped in the bud.
