Nagaland Lynching: 42 Arrested, Curfew Back, Internet Ban on

Mangalore Today News Network

Guwahati, Mar 09, 2015:  Forty-two people have now been arrested in Dimapur, Nagaland, where a mob broke into a prison, dragged out a rape accused and killed him last week. Curfew, lifted for a while this morning after three days, has been imposed again in the city. Internet services and phone text messages have been blocked in the state.

  

Here are the latest developments:

1. Internet services were frozen last night after videos of the accused, Syed Sarif Uddin Khan, being lynched were widely shared on the web. Internet services and cellphone text messaging will remain blocked till at least 6 pm tomorrow.
   
2. After being lifted for a while in the morning, curfew was reimposed Dimapur. There has been tension in the city after it was rumoured that Khan was an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh.
   
3. That has been proved wrong. Khan’s brothers are in the Indian Army and his father was an Air Force officer. 
   
4. There are also question marks over the rape case filed against him. The police said the forensic report of the woman is awaited.
   
5. The issue found echo in Parliament today, with Congress members from Assam dubbing the lynching a failure of the Nagaland government. Gaurav Gogoi of the Congress said the Central forces deployed at the jail failed to protect the accused.
   
6. Shiv Sena, an ally of the NDA, said the mob fury reflects people’s anger towards sexual crimes against women. An editorial in Sena mouthpiece Saamna said it would be a mockery to term the incident as a law and order failure, since, the government "does not think of the deteriorating law and order situation when women are raped, but thinks about it when a rape accused in punished in public".
   
7. On Thursday, thousands broke into the Dimapur Central Jail, dragged out Khan, stripped him, beat him up, tied him to a motorcycle and dragged him for 7 km. He died on the way. The mob then hung his body at a roadside roundabout.
   
8. Widespread protests took place across Nagaland since, and at Khan’s hometown Karimganj in neighbouring Assam, where his funeral was held on Sunday. Over 10,000 people attended the funeral.
   
9. Twenty people were arrested for the crime this morning, taking the total number   of arrests to 42. But Khan’s brother Jamal Khan has alleged that most of the killers are still roaming free.
   
10.  "We are in the process of identifying more people and we can expect several more arrests in the coming days," said senior Nagaland police officer Wabang Jamir.

 

Courtesy: NDTV