A court in central Assam’s Karbi Anglong district on Friday awarded life imprisonment to 12 people who were convicted in a case of mob lynching seven years ago.
The police had filed a chargesheet against 19 autorickshaw drivers for the death of 16-year-old Jhankar Saikia on July 1, 2013. They had assaulted Jhankar and his lawyer-father Haren Saikia after they had refused to pay ₹30 instead of the regular fare of ₹20.
Mr. Saikia recovered but his son succumbed to injuries in a private hospital. On February 24, almost two years after the trial began in 2018, district judge Amiruddin Ahmed convicted 12 for lynching the teen and acquitted four of them.
Two others, Barlong Terang and Gibson Timung, have been absconding since the incident while another was tried by a court for juveniles. The sentence was pronounced under five relevant sections of the IPC.
A local organisation, Joint Action Committee for Autonomous State, said it was not happy with the district court’s verdict and would challenge it in the Gauhati High Court.
The judgment came a day after the Mizoram government condemned mob assault on three non-tribal traders in the State’s Mamit district on Tuesday.
The people of West Lungdar village in the district had attacked the three – two from Uttar Pradesh and one from Assam – on suspicion of being child abductors.
“The incident happened because of rumours spread via social media about strangers attempting to kidnap a 13-year-old boy in the area,” Mizoram’s Home Minister Lalchamliana said.
The assaulted trio was travelling in an SUV.
This was reminiscent of the lynching of two Guwahati-based men, Nilotpal Das and Abhijeet Nath, in Assam’s Karbi Anglong district in June 2018.
