Mob lynches Guwahati youths on suspicion of being child lifters
GUWAHATI: Two young men hailing from affluent families of Guwahati were lynched by a mob on suspicion they were child-lifters. The ghastly incident happened in Panjuri Kacharigaon, a tribal village in central Assam’s Karbi Anglong district, around 200 km from Guwahati, on Friday evening and it came to light after a video clip of the lynching was shared on social media.
The victims — Nilotpal Das, a sound engineer, and Abhijit Nath, an engineering dropout — were nature lovers and they travelled to the tribal village on vacation. When they were returning, a mob intercepted their car and thrashed them fatally on suspicion they were child traffickers.
In the video clip, a bleeding Nilotpal was seen pleading that they were not child-lifters and be let off.
The police so far arrested four persons. “It was a crowd of 200-250. A police team reached the spot within minutes of the assault but found one person to be dead. The other person succumbed to his injuries on the way to hospital,” Karbi Anglong SP Siva Prasad told TNIE.
The incident came amid growing fear among people in some districts over unknown childlifters. The fear was triggered by rumours on the social media.
The superintendent of police attributed a combination of bad circumstances to the incident. He also said there were no signs of a communal tension on the ground “but the social media is playing a very bad role here with the users making unsolicited, unnecessary and provocat ive comments”. Gopal Chandra Das, father of Nilotpal, said his son was a great lover of nature.
“It is unfortunate that he died doing what he loved the most.” Abhijit’s father Ajit Nath demanded action as per the law ag ainst the murderers.