A court in central Assam’s Karbi Anglong district on Friday sentenced 12 people to life imprisonment for their roles in a case of mob lynching seven years ago.
The police in Diphu, the district headquarters located about 250km east of Guwahati, had filed a charge sheet against 19 auto-rickshaw drivers for the death of 16-year-old Jhankar Saikia on July 1, 2013.
The police submitted that the accused had assaulted Jhankar and his lawyer-father Haren Saikia after they had refused to pay ₹30 instead of the regular fare of ₹20. Mr. Saikia recovered but his son succumbed to injuries in a private hospital.
On February 24, almost two years after the trial began in 2018, district judge Amiruddin Ahmed convicted 12 of the accused for lynching the teenager and acquitted four of them. Two others — Barlong Terang and Gibson Timung — have been absconding since the incident, while another person was tried by a court for juveniles.
The sentence was pronounced under five relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code.
A local organisation called the Joint Action Committee for Autonomous State, which is campaigning to protect the rights of the Karbi tribals, expressed unhappiness with the district court’s verdict and said it would challenge the order in the Gauhati High Court.
The judgment came a day after the Mizoram government condemned a mob assault on three non-tribal traders in the State’s Mamit district on Tuesday. The people of West Lungdar village in the district had attacked the three persons — two from Uttar Pradesh and one from Assam — on suspicion of being child abductors.
“The incident happened because of rumours spread via social media about strangers attempting to kidnap a 13-year-old boy in the area,” Mizoram’s Home Minister Lalchamliana said.
The assaulted trio was travelling in an SUV. The latest incident was reminiscent of the lynching of two Guwahati-based men, Nilotpal Das and Abhijeet Nath, in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district in June 2018.
