Six rescued from Assam mobs that took them for child lifters
GUWAHATI: In two separate incidents, six persons, including three seers, were rescued in different parts of Assam from unruly crowds that suspected they were child lifters.
The first incident was reported on Thursday morning from Mahur town, close to Tripura, where the three seers had halted on their way to the Sundari temple in Tripura as part of a roadtrip to visit temples in the Northeast. “We spent the night on the highway. In the morning we went to Haflong to fuel up the car,” said Sunil Puri, one of the seers, and a resident of Gujarat. The other two, Lalit Ban and Amar Giri, are from UP.
“In Haflong, we were told that the roads were bad, so we decided to return,” he added.
Puri said one of the three, Lalit Ban, had stepped into the Mahur railway station to freshen up, while the other two waited in the car. “Suddenly, two boys came and asked us for our identity cards,” Puri recalled, adding that within minutes, more people came. As the mob swelled, Puri reportedly ran inside the station. “The station master told us to approach the Army,” he said. The Mahur railway station has a presence of the Territorial Army.
By the time Army personnel and the local police intervened, about 600 people were surrounding the three, accusing them of being child lifters and throwing stones at their car.
“It was an uncontrollable situation. To placate the crowd we took the three inside with us and asked about 20 people in the crowd to come and ask them questions,” Pushpraj Singh, additional superintendent of police, Dima Hasao said. “It was a case of mob frenzy. The mob was repeatedly saying ‘Bahar Nikalo,’” Singh recounted.
The SP said they questioned the seers in front of the locals, dispelling their doubts. He added that the crowd mistook mouth freshener the trio had for sedatives. “We ate the so called sedatives and asked them (the seer trio) to eat them also in front of the crowd. It turned out to be mouth fresheners,” he said.
“It is like a new birth. We would not have survived if the Army and the police had not come,” said Puri.
The second incident was reported from about 25 kms away from Haflong, where three vendors from Uttar Pradesh were saved by timely intervention of the police.
“An angry mob had surrounded them when the police intervened and took them to a safer location,” a district police officer said. Singh said rumours on social media platforms such as Whatsapp have become difficult to control. “We are trying to talk to the community leaders and students organisations,” he said. No arrest have been made in the two cases so far.