States: Meghalaya; Vigilante Overkill

India Today
Sep 28,1998

MEGHALAYA
Vigilante Overkill

Volunteers patrolling the streets of Shillong to check crime take the law into their own hands. The result: 10 innocents lynched, 35 injured.

By Avirook Sen

Vigilante Overkill The sodium vapour lamps light a street that's been dead since 10 in the evening. From the haunted shadows of a bylane comes the shuffle of footsteps. A stick keeps time. Eight youths, some dressed in tracksuits, others in jeans and jackets, emerge into the orange light. Their eyes are bleary, their expressions bored. It is 1:30 in the morning. A cigarette is lit and passed around. "We are here to protect the community," says one. "The police have been laying eggs while robberies and dacoities have gone on. No antisocial dares step out since we've been around from the beginning of August."

The last is a considerable understatement. Even dogs don't bark after lights-out time in Shillong. Thousands of volunteers, under directions of the headmen of the traditional village durbars, have decided to walk the streets at night to deter criminals. They were prompted by a sharp rise in the city's crime graph in the months of June and July. Their vigil continues till the early hours of the morning.

The robberies have stopped. Lynchings, however, have begun: 10 people have died and 35 others have been seriously injured -- because the vigilantes considered them "suspects".

The group of eight grows to a crowd of 50 in no time. The vigilantes appear overstaffed and underworked. "We've been waiting for the thieves for two weeks now. But they aren't coming. Our hands are itching," says one. Allen Pyngrope, deputy headman of the locality, explains: "We get restless, so when someone is caught, everyone wants a piece of the action ..." There are nods all around.

Tapan Das, a peon at the State Bank Officers' Cooperative, was pronounced dead on the night of August 13. His death certificate says he died due to "shock and haemorrhage following multiple stabbing and sharp and blunt injuries to head, chest, abdomen and limbs." That night, Das had stepped out of his house in Demseiniong out of curiosity, hearing cries of "thief, thief" raised by the vigilantes. A few volunteers pounced on him, crying they had got their man. Eyewitnesses say a mob suddenly materialised. Das was stabbed, kicked and trampled even as his wife wailed from their window, waving his identity card. Says Pradip Rai, Das' neighbour: "We were told to shut our doors and not interfere." They didn't, so the toll didn't go beyond one.

Compared with the corresponding period (January-July) in 1997, robberies and dacoities in Shillong had gone up by three times. There were 17 cases of robbery and 16 dacoities (involving five or more people) between January and July 1997, whereas the figures for 1998 read 44 and 38. Says Rajiv Mehta, DIG (eastern range): "The idea that localities help out the police in catching thugs came from us in view of the growing incidence of crime." Unfortunately, the village headmen (there are more than 50 in Shillong) decided that they didn't need the police at all. The mobs grew unmanageable, but there were strict orders from the top echelons preventing the police from confronting them. In fact, three policemen were beaten up "on suspicion". And at the Nongmynsong police station, a constable admits he's afraid to step out of the premises.

Now the vigilantes have even made their own rules (published in newspapers) in several localities: no one is to be seen outside after 10 at night. In addition, there are roadblocks in every area cutting off access. The hysteria has been whipped up to such an extent that hotels in this very popular tourist destination shut their kitchens by 9:30 p.m. and triple lock their doors. Guests can go out at their peril.

Pushpa Pradhan, a 30-year-old gardener at the Meghalaya Secretariat, broke one of the rules and died for it. Pradhan was suffering from dysentery and went out to defecate at one in the morning. The common toilet being behind the house, he stepped out on to the street. His wife Saraswati, two months pregnant, tried to put their 18-month-old son to sleep and waited for Pradhan to return. They heard nothing through the night. The next morning, they found Pradhan's battered body half a kilometre away: the vigilantes had dragged him to a quiet spot for questioning. "His limbs had the texture of jelly and in many places we could see the white of his bones," says Saraswati.

On August 18, the Shillong bench of the Guwahati High Court intervened suo moto and directed the state Government to tackle the deteriorating law and order situation in Meghalaya, especially in Shillong. The Government reacted by increasing night patrolling by the police, but chose to ignore the real menace -- vigilante mobs. "Ultimately it is a communal problem, it's the Khasis versus the outsiders. And a Khasi leadership in the state is never going to rub the village durbars the wrong way," says one police official. Predictably, most of the victims were non-khasis. The sentiments in Government were reflected in a meeting of top state officials and politicians to assess the situation. A senior bureaucrat is reported to have said that "not all of those who died were angels".

Cracking down on the vigilantes would mean offending the powerful village durbars, so the Government decided to stand by them instead. No matter that they are armed and posed a great danger. At a meeting with headmen on August 25, Home Minister Donkupar Roy assured the headmen that "there was no decision to arrest any volunteers". The licence to kill was as good as formalised.

Thirty-eight-year-old Nandu Swer had put in a night of vigilante work on August 17. The next day, he was preparing to rest when volunteers from the street below woke him up. They had a man with them who knew Swer. The vigilantes told Swer that his friend "was moving around suspiciously in a car with three other companions". The secretary of the Polo Ground Village Committee, Pradeep Bla, asked Swer to explain his acquaintance with the man to the durbar. This was in the wee hours of the morning, so Swer protested. They took him anyway. His wife Rinzing ran after the crowd and was told to go back home. She did. "I saw a huge crowd gathering but I thought he would be all right because we knew the secretary," she says. The next day, she went to the civil hospital to claim Swer's deadbody.

The village durbar, and even the police allege that Swer was a small-time drug dealer and keeper of stolen property. There isn't much evidence of that in the two-room house he stayed in. "And anyway, that is not the issue," says a neighbour. "The law is there to handle crimes."

Is it? Rinzing Swer filed an fir the morning of her husband's death. She named people she knew were present in the mob, including Bla. But in keeping with unwritten policy, not one policeman has come to the Swers' residence to follow up the case. The vigilantes continue their patrolling. Their leaders roam free. And terrified citizens wonder who's next.

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