Mobile internet and SMS services blocked in Tripura after three rumoured child-trafficking lynchings

GUWAHATI: Mobile internet and SMS services are suspended in BJP ruled Tripura since Thursday after rumour mongering on social media over child-lifting for illegal organ trade claimed three lives and injured five others in a string of mob violence.

Official sources say the services will remain blocked till Saturday 2 pm to thwart recurrence of such atrocities.

Mob violence that started in neighbouring Assam’s Karbi Anglong district has now spread to Tripura. Three hawkers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, who reached by a car at Murabari in Tripura West district, were mistaken as child abductors. Locals thrashed and chased them to a camp of Tripura State Rifles. Despite police intervention, a mob barged into the camp and lynched one of the hawkers. Two other hawkers, the car driver and a police constable were admitted to a hospital. At Kalachera in South Tripura district bordering Bangladesh, a mob killed Sukanta Chakraborty who was out there in a car with loudspeakers campaigning against superstitions.

The car driver escaped with injuries. Initially, the police said the attack was a result of rumour- mongering but it retracted later. In the third incident at Bishalgarh in Sephahijila district, a deranged woman died after she was brutally beaten up by a mob which suspected that she was part of a child-lifting and organ trafficking racket. Eight people have been arrested so far in these cases. Unfortunately, BJP and opposition CPI-M and Congress are engaged in mud-slinging. The opposition parties blames the BJP for failing to protect innocent lives. The BJP accuses the CPI-M of triggering panic by circulating rumours.

STRING OF LYNCHINGS

Mob attacks three hawkers at Murabari in Tripura West district, one dead

In South Tripura district, mob kills Sukanta Chakraborty who was out there in a car

Another mob mistakens deranged woman as child-lifter at Bishalgarh in Sephahijila district, lynches her