Guwahati: A group of over 20 unidentified men beat up 15 Bengali-speaking Muslim labourers working at Dolbagan, in Upper Assam on August 24. They then asked the workers, originally from the Lower Assam districts of Goalpara and Barpeta, to leave Upper Assam within an hour.
This assault occurred close on the heels of the recent slew of communally charged statements by state chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.
The perpetrators who had their faces covered allegedly walked into the workers’ common room and began beating them up. The attackers also recorded a video and released it online. In the video, the labourers are seen being forced to kneel, hold their ears, and chant, “Joi ai Assam (long live mother Assam)”, “AASU zindabad” and “Bir Lachit.”
AASU is the acronym for the All Assam Students’ Union. Lachit is the iconic Ahom general who fought Mughals in the Battle of Saraighat.
An attacker is also seen in the video, behind the labourers, and continuously whacking them on their bare backs. The video recording also shows threats being issued to the labourers to leave that particular place as soon as possible or to face dire consequences if they even think of returning.
‘Thrashing us like cattle’
The Wire reached out to 24-year-old Rajibul Haque, one of the labourers who was among the 15 who were attacked.
Haque said the had been working on the three-storey building for three years. The incident, however, has left him bruised and humiliated.
“They were thrashing us like cattle and there was a barrage of verbal abuses,” said Haque.
“The verbal abuses targeted our faith, our community and our people. The entire ordeal lasted for one hour. They gave us an ultimatum to leave Nazira within half-an-hour. I will never go back there,” he added.
Haque said that once they were made to leave, the group – injured – walked through the forests to reach the railway station.
Now that the United Opposition Forum (UOF) has filed a first information report against Sarma, the role of his constant dog-whistling and at times, open hatred, against the state’s Muslim – particularly Bengali-speaking Muslim – community has been under question.
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The FIR, lodged on August 28, accused Sarma of “trying to promote enmity between different grounds on the grounds of religion and race”.
The UOF is a coalition of 18 opposition political parties and a part of the INDIA bloc.
‘Himanta connect’
Since the incident and the FIR, it has emerged that the labourers had been working on a building sanctioned under the Sarma government’s flagship skill development programme. The name of one Mayur Borgohain, a former BJP candidate who was defeated at the 2021 assembly polls from the Nazira LAC, and is an alleged close associate of Sarma, has also surfaced in connection with the project. Alamin Haque, the central assistant general secretary of Satra Mukti Sangram Samiti, the students’ wing of KMSS, and who helped some of the victims noted that Borgohain was the contractor. An FIR was lodged at Barpeta Sadr police station against Borgohain.
Some of the victims told reporters that they are owed around Rs 15 lakh in payments as a group.
‘Mad dog’
Bhupen Kumar Borah, the president of Assam Pradesh Congress Committee said, “Sarma is playing communal games both inside and outside the assembly and traversing across the state fostering communal animosity against different people. He has diminished political decency and decorum. His most serious crime is that he deliberately sowed communal seeds by colouring incidents of various crimes with his communal brushstrokes. His communal belligerence proves that he is a mad dog which he himself said in a party meeting held in the recent past.”
The FIR against Sarma, too, makes mention of this: “The belligerent nature of the accused can be gauged from the fact that in a party meeting held in the recent past, he claimed to be a mad dog.”
“And that if Sarma is not arrested immediately and restrained he can create a riot like situation in the state for getting political mileage out of it,” the FIR mentions at the end.
MLA Akhil Gogoi said in the state assembly that Mayur Borgohain himself had taken those labourers to work at the construction project. “Instead of giving the labourers the pending Rs 15 lakh, he initiated the attack, ousted the labourers and circulated the video,” Gogoi said.
The Sivasagar AASU committee told the media that it is not involved in the incident. “The police should identify the perpetrators and bring them to justice. This entire incident reeks of a plan initiated by a third party to create mischief. We should be cautious about such nefarious designs from a third party,” it said.
