Violence rocks Garo Hills: arson, vandalism leave two dead
Mob vandalises Jama Masjid in Tura, Imam allegedly manhandled by group of men during tense unrest.
The bullet that killed him did not ask his name. It did not ask if he was tribal or non-tribal, if his family had lived in Chibinang for generations or if he had arrived last year. It only sought flesh, and it found it.
In the dusty streets of this small town in West Garo Hills, two Muslim men now lie dead. Their names have not been widely shared, lost in the chaos of headlines and official statements. But somewhere in Chibinang, two families are waking up to an emptiness that no curfew, no army deployment, no internet shutdown can fill. A wife who will never again hear her husband’s footsteps at the door.
The violence began with a piece of paper. On February 17, the Garo Hills Autonomous District Council issued a notification requiring candidates for the April 10 elections to produce a valid Scheduled Tribe certificate. It was an administrative decision, a bureaucratic line drawn on a map. But that line ran straight through the hearts of five constituencies that fall under the non-tribal belt, where families have lived for decades, where children have grown up speaking the local languages, where graves of grandparents mark the soil as home.
When former Phulbari MLA Esmatur Mominin and another non-tribal candidate went to file their nominations at the Deputy Commissioner’s office in Tura, they did not expect to be attacked. They were exercising a democratic right, or so they thought. Instead, they became the spark that lit a fire no one could control.
By Monday night, Chibinang was burning. Not with literal flames at first, but with the slow, creeping heat of suspicion and anger. By Tuesday, the flames were real. Shops were torched. Market sheds were reduced to rubble. A political party office, once a place of debate and discussion, became a pile of twisted metal. Commercial establishments, the lifelines of small-town economy, were vandalized by men who had forgotten that destruction never fills an empty stomach.
Then the mobs turned on the places of worship. The Imam of the Tura mosque, a man who spends his days in prayer and peace, was manhandled by strangers who saw only a label, not a human being. The Jama Masjid in the town was vandalized, its walls scarred by hate, its silence broken by the sound of breaking glass. In retaliation, the Garo Students’ Union office was set ablaze, years of advocacy and representation consumed by fire.
By Tuesday afternoon, hundreds had gathered at the Chibinang market. The police arrived, as they must. Stones were thrown. Voices screamed. And then, the guns spoke.
Abraham T Sangma, the Garo Hills Police Chief, would later explain: “The firing occurred while we were dispersing an unlawful assembly.” Two people died at the scene, he said. Residents of Chibinang. Men with names, with families, with futures.
In the aftermath, the army arrived. Columns of soldiers in uniform marched through streets that just hours ago had echoed with chaos. A flag march, they call it. A show of force, a promise of order. Lt Col Mahender Rawat confirmed the deployment but would not share details. How many columns?
Curfew was imposed, a heavy blanket of silence over the five Garo Hills districts. In an age of instant communication, the government chose the oldest tool in the book: isolation. Let them sit in the dark, let them think, let them cool down.
But in the dark, a mother sits by a window, waiting for a son who will not return. In the silence, a wife hears only her own sobs. The internet is shut down, but grief finds its way. It always does.
The notification that started it all remains in place. The elections are still scheduled for April 10. But in Chibinang, two Muslim men are dead, and the question hangs in the air like smoke: what is a piece of paper worth, measured in human lives?