New Delhi: Three more accused have been arrested by Assam police in the April 7 mob attack on an elderly man, Shaukat Ali, where he was also forced to consume pork – which is prohibited by his religion. The mob had also heckled and abused Kamal Thapa, the manager of the local weekly market in the Bishwanth Chariali area where Ali has been running an eatery for over three decades.
Those arrested on April 10 have been identified as Dipak Koal, Subhal Koal and Jintu Saikia. According to the state police, in all, four persons have been arrested so far and the hunt is on to nab the rest of the accused named in the two FIRs filed by Ali’s brother and Thapa. One Dipen Gogoi was the first to be arrested by police in the case (No 80/2019) on April 9 evening.
The attack made a stir nationally when on April 9, a video showed Ali, sitting in mud, being heckled and abused. In it, a mob can be heard asking Ali in Assamese since when he had been selling beef at the local market, whether he had a license to sell beef, and whether the manager (mahaldar) of the weekly market knew about it.
Ali was also asked if he was an Indian citizen and whether his name featured in the recently published final draft of the updated National Register of Citizens. Some reports claimed Ali was also physically assaulted.
Also read: In Shaukat Ali’s Humiliation, Identity Is Reduced to a Single Denominator
Assam’s Cattle Preservation Act, 1950, allows slaughter of cows over 14 years of age or those incapable of breeding. As per the Act, a fitness for slaughter certificate (loosely referred to as license) must be granted by a veterinary doctor. However, consuming or selling beef is nor a cognisable offence in the state. The Act also doesn’t differentiate between cow and buffalo meat.
Widespread condemnation
The video, which went viral, has been condemned by a wide section of people in the state. On April 9, civil society groups assembled in Guwahati to denounce the incident. Apart from making speeches by various residents of the city, those gathered also sang the iconic song of Bhupen Hazarika, “Manuhe manuhor ba be” (People for people; one for another).
Women in Governance-Assam, in a letter addressed to the state chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal, condemned the incident and demanded immediate arrest of the culprits and a judicial inquiry into the matter. “Assam Police should be kept on high alert and increase patrolling to stop such communal mob violence in future considering the upcoming Lok Sabha elections,” the letter said.
Political tension
Many in Assam have linked the incident that took place in Biswanath district to the ugly and close fight being witnessed between the BJP and the Congress in the Tezpur parliamentary constituency for the last few weeks. The constituency has been in local news for some time as the sitting BJP MP, R.P. Sarmah, was denied a ticket allegedly at the behest of BJP’s regional strategist Himanta Biswa Sarma, as he himself wanted to contest from the seat. This led Sarmah to openly revolt against Sarma.
The BJP national leadership, however, denied a ticket to Sarma. On March 21, BJP national president Amit Shah tweeted that Sarma was denied a ticket as he was needed to oversee the performance of the party in the Northeast. Instead of Sarmah, Pallabh Lochan Das, seen close to Sarma, was given the party ticket. An aggrieved Sarmah, from the Nepali community, said he and his supporters would not back Das.
Das has also reportedly used derogatory words against Congress’s M.G.V.K. Bhanu, a retired senior bureaucrat of the state belonging to Andhra Pradesh, and called him an ‘outsider’, apparently to consolidate the Assamese votes for his party. Aside from the tea tribe, the constituency also has a substantial number of Muslim voters.
Also read: Elderly Muslim Man in Assam Heckled, Abused by Mob for ‘Selling Beef’
Shyamkanu Mahanta, entrepreneur and a well-known organiser of festivals that promote the Northeast, wrote on Facebook, “Elections will come and go. Someone will win or lose. Things will go on as always. Out state has to remain, hate was never our culture. Let it remain that way.”
Well-known Guwahati-based intellectual and political observer Hiren Gohain told The Wire: “Now that it is clear that there is going to be a close fight and in spite of its bravado and shower of sops, people will not gift them 22 out of the 25 Lok Sabha seats of the Northeast, the BJP is not taking any chances. Their communal rhetoric makes Hindus here uneasy. So they are resorting to trademark tricks like provoking Muslims into violence with fake incidents.”
“The video is definitely not a spontaneous mob. No faces in the crowd are visible. Only lower parts of the bodies. That is highly suspicious. And pork too is not available in the countryside except in tribal areas and tribals are not usually worked up on beef-eating,” he added.
Also read: The Missing Muslim Vote and Voice in 2019
Since the horrific Nellie massacre of 1983, Assam’s Brahmaputra Valley has not witnessed any Hindu-Muslim communal riot even though tensions between the two communities have been reported from time to time in the state’s Bodo Territorial Council, and also the Barak Valley where Bengali-speaking Hindus and Muslims are in nearly equal number.
Meanwhile, Pallabh Lochan Das, the BJP candidate for the Tezpur parliamentary constituency, accompanied by two party MLAs, visited Ali in the local hospital on April 10. MLA Padma Hazarika told local reporters thereafter that arrangements were being made to shift Ali to the Gauhati Medical College and Hospital for better treatment and care.
“We are suspecting that it was a planned incident. It is unfortunate; no sane and aware person would support it. Such a communal incident is not good for our region. Starting from the chief minister to all other party people, we have condemned it and the administration and police have been asked to nab the culprits as soon as possible,” he said.