GUWAHATI: In an extreme case of mob justice on a day when the entire country was in one way or the other outraged after the BBC documentary on the 2012 gang-rape incident, protestors in Nagaland broke into a jail and lynched an alleged rapist on Thursday.
The brutal incident was reported from the State’s commercial hub of Dimapur. It had remained on the boil ever since an alleged rape took place on February 23. The accused, Farid Khan, was arrested after the family of the victim, who is a local, had lodged an FIR. Khan, a Bengali Muslim who hailed from Assam, dealt in second hand cars. He had allegedly raped the victim several times on that day.
Several thousands of protestors, mostly students, barged into the Central Jail on Thursday around 3 pm and nabbed the accused. They stripped him and paraded him stark naked, heading towards the Clock Tower junction in the town, where they planned to publicly hang him. However, since Khan was beaten relentlessly along the way, he succumbed to injuries.
The rage of the protestors was such that even after his death, they tied the body to a two-wheeler and dragged it along for a few kilometers till the Clock Tower. Later, they tied it to the railing that surrounds the tower around 6 pm, after a three-hour ordeal.
Throughout the march, there was no presence of any security personnel. It was only after the incident that a posse of policemen came to retrieve the body. Initially, they fired some blank shots to scare away the protestors but they retaliated by pelting stones. In the resultant firing by the police, several were injured. Protestors also torched over ten vehicles, including buses.