Gurgaon assault on NE youths

Group of seven beats up two, tells students from Northeast to leave

New Delhi, Oct. 16, 2015: Two youths from Nagaland were beaten up today in Gurgaon by a group of people a day after a Manipuri engineering student and his two friends were assaulted in Bangalore for not speaking Kannada.

Police said a group of seven persons thrashed the two young men from Nagaland — Awang and Chester — with cricket bats and hockey sticks in the Sikanderpur area of Gurgaon early this morning. They later asked them to vacate the area where they had been living for the past four months.

A Manipuri man, who lives in the neighbourhood, witnessed the incident. He told thepolice that the victims were called out of their houses in Sikanderpur around 4am and taken to a nearby vegetable market and assaulted.

According to a member of the Northeast students’ support group, the attackers also shaved one of the victims’ head and asked them to tell their friends from the Northeast to leave Gurgaon.

“If you guys from Manipur and Nagaland come and stay here, we will kill you,” one of the attackers reportedly told the victims.

Both Chester and Awang were taken to a private hospital but moved to Gurgaon civil hospital because of the severity of their wounds. One of them was later shifted to south Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital.

“He has been kept under observation and his condition is stable,” said a doctor at Safdarjung Hospital.

The police, however, said it was a drunken brawl and not a hate crime. A case was registered at DLF City Phase I police station.

Dalbir Singh, assistant commissioner of police, Gurgaon, said raids were being carried out to arrest the accused persons. “We registered the case under Section 307 (attempt to murder), 323 (assault), 506 (criminal intimidation) IPC and SC/ST Act today. This is not a hate crime. The local men and the victims were drinking in a room,” he said.

A senior police official said the victims had faced another such attack two months ago but did not take up the matter with the police after the area panchayat promised that they would come to no more harm.

Awang and Chester had shifted to the area four months ago and had been staying in a rented room. Both worked in a local factory and earned Rs 8,000 each.

“We are scared and filed an FIR and asked the police to take strict action against the culprits,” the eyewitnesses said. “They abused people from the Northeast and asked them to leave Sikandarpur and go to China,” he said. “We are also Indian and have every right to live where we want to. We are poor people and came to Gurgaon from our villages to earn money.”

Congress MP Ninong Ering, who hails from Arunachal Pradesh, strongly condemned the assault and rued that the racial attacks against the Northeast people is on the rise.

“I strongly condemn the attacks. I have heard that local people from Sikandarpur where the victims lived said that they would not allow any more boys from the Northeast to live there. It’s unfortunate,” he said.

Ering, who is an MP from Arunachal East, said he would speak to home minister Rajnath Singh about the latest spurt in hate crimes against the people from the Northeast.

The minister of state for home, Kiren Rijiju, is also from the Northeast.

Bruce K. Thangkhal, media in-charge, Northeast Support Centre (NESC) and helpline, said, “This is not the first time that such an incident has taken place. Many people from the Northeast have been assaulted in the past.

This is the second or third incident in the area in six months.

There are no CCTVs installed in the area either.”

Home minister Rajnath Singh today spoke to Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah over phone and enquired about the assault on three northeastern students in Bangalore yesterday.

Siddaramaiah told him that the police responded quickly and arrested all those who were involved in the attack.

 

Courtesy: The Telegraph

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