We have highlighted a number of horrifying incidents that northeast students underwent in the past not only in the nation’s capital but also in other major cities of the country. It is a pity that in most of the cases, the law enforcement agencies behaved in a similar fashion, leading to the encouragement of the perpetrators.

A girl from the northeast was abducted and gang-raped by 4 car borne miscreants in Delhi some eight years back. There was wide spread condemnation and protest against the crime in the capital and even the Parliament was rocked not because she belongs to the north east but by the behaviour of the capital’s cops. Had the cops taken prompt action as soon as the two friends of the victim informed them, she could have been rescued before the miscreants were given the time to rape her.

The miscreants after about two hours of gang-raping the girl had the audacity to return to the spot from where she was initially abducted and dump her there. Even after over two hours had elapsed, the Police were not seen around and this very attitude of theirs had inflamed the northeasterners. The north east MPs had stormed the Parliament and questioned the motives of the cops who had made a mockery of the law of the land.

After three months of this incident, another gory incident of the stabbing of two girls from the north east took place at the famous India Gate, Mumbai. One girl died on the spot while the other was seriously wounded.

Soon after the sensational incident, the Mumbai Police personnel who caught the killer tried to justify that the latter was mentally unsound as he attacked several people including his own father and brother earlier in the day.

OPINIONS  “The students from the region are being brought out in different culture. I was associated with a management institute for a long time and I can say the problem lies elsewhere. From my experience, I can say that the students from this region are the most well behaved, compared to students in the rest of India. They are taught how to behave with elders and grow up with certain value systems. But they are also timid and sensitive. They can hardly speak out in class. U scold a student in front of their friends and they stary crying. They believe that cross questioning a teacher to clear their doubts is showing disrespect to them, while I appreciate our students for their value system, they have to change with time because their counter parts in the rest f the country are growing up differently” Partho Pratim Roy, Kolkata in a letter to the editor of Shillong Times on 30.4.2012 “Northeast is a state. People who live in Northeast are “chinkies”. Northeastern people eat smelly and strange food. The entire place is filled with mountains and jungles. Northeast is a troubled region. If you are familiar with any of these statements, you would probably know what exactly I an talking about. The above statements pretty much define the concept of what appears to be a majority of people who have never been to this beautiful land of the seven sisters.” Manashree Bhuyan Prakash, editor of Travel Magazine, Mumbai

One wonders as to how the explanation could be taken as logically correct. If the killer had really attacked many people including his father earlier in the day, there must have been enough alarm and they could have nabbed him before he committed another crime. But there was no such sign till the killer attacked the two unfortunate girls from the north east at the famed India Gate at about 05:45 P.M.

Therefore, the Mumbai episode remains mysterious till date. One wonders whether the Mumbai Police in fear of reprisal from the northeastern people tried to paint the whole scenario as having been perpetrated by a mentally unsound man so that the matter would end there abruptly. Regrettably, nobody questioned why the allegedly deranged man was allowed to go on a killing spree throughout the day with impunity.

Sadly, nobody tried to help the victims lying in a pool of blood on the ground except for one person who picked the girls up and managed to take them to the hospital.

The Delhi Police’s refusal to admit FIRs filed by northeast students is nothing new but there is a new development whereby the Police in Delhi started threatening those north east students who brought criminal cases to their notice.

There were instances where even the Delhi Police joined in the bashing up of north east students. Sometime in the middle of September last year, an ASI and his two associates of the Delhi Police had to be suspended for allegedly abusing and assaulting north east boys. Initially, the Police higher ups were trying to hide the identities of their subordinate officers who were involved in abusing the north east students but they had to act when the north east MP Sanjay Takam intervened. Another interesting development is that even the police personnel who were involved in assaulting the north east students had managed to fabricate stories in collusion with doctors of the country’s famed AIIMS that these boys were under the influence of alcohol.

Another ‘norm’ in Delhi is that whenever any rape, molestation and assault is perpetrated on the north east students; people in the locality hardly come to their rescue. In some instances, they allowed the accused to flee from the scene. So sadly there is no sense of security for these helpless north east students.
Thousands of students from the north east are swarming Delhi alone annually to pursue higher studies and jobs. The number is likely to increase in the next few years because of the unending political conflicts in the region. On one hand, the north east youth are frustrated by the prevailing situation in their region; on the other, their security elsewhere in the country including Delhi is not secure.

We are happy that the Centre had already laid the foundation stone for a 500-bedded hostel for the north east girls studying in Delhi. We need more such hostels for the north east students studying in the national’s capital.

We have highlighted a number of horrifying incidents that northeast students underwent in the past not only in the nation’s capital but also in other major cities of the country. It is a pity that in most of the cases, the law enforcement agencies behaved in a similar fashion, leading to the encouragement of the perpetrators.

A girl from the northeast was abducted and gang-raped by 4 car borne miscreants in Delhi some eight years back. There was wide spread condemnation and protest against the crime in the capital and even the Parliament was rocked not because she belongs to the north east but by the behaviour of the capital’s cops. Had the cops taken prompt action as soon as the two friends of the victim informed them, she could have been rescued before the miscreants were given the time to rape her.

The miscreants after about two hours of gang-raping the girl had the audacity to return to the spot from where she was initially abducted and dump her there. Even after over two hours had elapsed, the Police were not seen around and this very attitude of theirs had inflamed the northeasterners. The north east MPs had stormed the Parliament and questioned the motives of the cops who had made a mockery of the law of the land.

After three months of this incident, another gory incident of the stabbing of two girls from the north east took place at the famous India Gate, Mumbai. One girl died on the spot while the other was seriously wounded.

Soon after the sensational incident, the Mumbai Police personnel who caught the killer tried to justify that the latter was mentally unsound as he attacked several people including his own father and brother earlier in the day.

OPINIONS  “The students from the region are being brought out in different culture. I was associated with a management institute for a long time and I can say the problem lies elsewhere. From my experience, I can say that the students from this region are the most well behaved, compared to students in the rest of India. They are taught how to behave with elders and grow up with certain value systems. But they are also timid and sensitive. They can hardly speak out in class. U scold a student in front of their friends and they stary crying. They believe that cross questioning a teacher to clear their doubts is showing disrespect to them, while I appreciate our students for their value system, they have to change with time because their counter parts in the rest f the country are growing up differently” Partho Pratim Roy, Kolkata in a letter to the editor of Shillong Times on 30.4.2012 “Northeast is a state. People who live in Northeast are “chinkies”. Northeastern people eat smelly and strange food. The entire place is filled with mountains and jungles. Northeast is a troubled region. If you are familiar with any of these statements, you would probably know what exactly I an talking about. The above statements pretty much define the concept of what appears to be a majority of people who have never been to this beautiful land of the seven sisters.” Manashree Bhuyan Prakash, editor of Travel Magazine, Mumbai

One wonders as to how the explanation could be taken as logically correct. If the killer had really attacked many people including his father earlier in the day, there must have been enough alarm and they could have nabbed him before he committed another crime. But there was no such sign till the killer attacked the two unfortunate girls from the north east at the famed India Gate at about 05:45 P.M.

Therefore, the Mumbai episode remains mysterious till date. One wonders whether the Mumbai Police in fear of reprisal from the northeastern people tried to paint the whole scenario as having been perpetrated by a mentally unsound man so that the matter would end there abruptly. Regrettably, nobody questioned why the allegedly deranged man was allowed to go on a killing spree throughout the day with impunity.

Sadly, nobody tried to help the victims lying in a pool of blood on the ground except for one person who picked the girls up and managed to take them to the hospital.

The Delhi Police’s refusal to admit FIRs filed by northeast students is nothing new but there is a new development whereby the Police in Delhi started threatening those north east students who brought criminal cases to their notice.

There were instances where even the Delhi Police joined in the bashing up of north east students. Sometime in the middle of September last year, an ASI and his two associates of the Delhi Police had to be suspended for allegedly abusing and assaulting north east boys. Initially, the Police higher ups were trying to hide the identities of their subordinate officers who were involved in abusing the north east students but they had to act when the north east MP Sanjay Takam intervened. Another interesting development is that even the police personnel who were involved in assaulting the north east students had managed to fabricate stories in collusion with doctors of the country’s famed AIIMS that these boys were under the influence of alcohol.

Another ‘norm’ in Delhi is that whenever any rape, molestation and assault is perpetrated on the north east students; people in the locality hardly come to their rescue. In some instances, they allowed the accused to flee from the scene. So sadly there is no sense of security for these helpless north east students.
Thousands of students from the north east are swarming Delhi alone annually to pursue higher studies and jobs. The number is likely to increase in the next few years because of the unending political conflicts in the region. On one hand, the north east youth are frustrated by the prevailing situation in their region; on the other, their security elsewhere in the country including Delhi is not secure.

We are happy that the Centre had already laid the foundation stone for a 500-bedded hostel for the north east girls studying in Delhi. We need more such hostels for the north east students studying in the national’s capital.

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At the same time, we along with our 34 MPs from the region still need to play an effective role in the capital to create a sense of oneness and security. Out of these 34 MPs, some of them are Ministers in the UPA Ministry. One of them is holding charge of the Department of North East Region (DoNER). Those personnel who refused to entertain FIRs or threatened north east students should be intimated that what they did is not only against the law of the land but will also bring a serious gap between the people of the region and the mainland people. To a certain extent, we can expect a solution to this uncultured behaviour of some cops in Delhi when our 34 MPs in a single voice rise against the racial discrimination on the floor of Parliament.

Oken Jeet Sandham

EP DESK ADDS

Recently, Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma’s niece Dana Silva Sangma who was pursuing her MBA at Amity University in Gurgaon was found hanging in her hostel after she was accused of cheating in her second semester examination. The allegation was that she had a mobile phone in her pocket which was in the switched on mode. This had been written on Dana’s answer script by the invigilator who had seized it after Dana was ‘caught cheating’. The humiliation meted on her drove her over the edge and she rushed to her hostel room where she hung herself. One has to question the magnitude of the humiliation that was meted on Dana which drove her to take this drastic step. Following her death, many north east students studying at the university have alleged that the students of various communities of the north east region are treated ‘differently’ by both the faculty and fellow students.

In a similar incident, exactly four days later, yet another student from the north east committed suicide at Delhi. This time, Samiran Saikia 19, from Assam who was pursuing a BSc (Honours) degree in Botany at Hindu College under Delhi University was found hanging from the ceiling of the apartment where he lived.

Yet in another case very recently, Mr. Richard Loitam of Archarya N. R. B. School of Architecture who hailed from Manipur died on 18th April after being allegedly attacked by two of his seniors in the college hostel. The attack was allegedly due to the fact that Richard had changed the channel of the television while his seniors were watching a programme. It is said that these seniors had ganged up on him and assaulted him to such a degree that he succumbed to his injuries. In a strange turn of events, it has been alleged that Richard was a drug addict and that he was frequently involved in accidents. His death was attributed to one such accident in which he was involved not long before his death. This however, had been strongly refuted by his friends and others who knew him well.

These are a few of the many incidents which have come to the light. However, one should remember that many such incidents of racial discrimination, harassment and humiliation go unreported.

The Chief Minister of Meghalaya was perhaps right when he expressed the need to have quality education centers in the region itself which has comparatively few institutes of excellence.  The chain of events which had led to these unfortunate incidents had drawn a lot of public concern, comments and opinion. It is without doubt that the youth of the region flock to the metros in search of a better future. However, it is ironic that in search of a better life ahead, some lives are cut short due to discrimination against the youth belonging to a region largely misunderstood by a section of the people living in the metros.