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10-12-2024
NEW DELHI/ KADAMTALA: The last thing that Shahin Ahmed, 38, remembers of his brother, Alfeshani Ahmed, was a frantic call with him amid gunshots and screams.
At about 9pm on October 6, Alfeshani, a 36-year-old owner of a smartphone and electronic accessories shop, had just hastily shut his shop in the Kadamtala market to rush back home to Jher Jheri, a Muslim-majority village over three kilometres (about 2 miles) away in North Tripura, a district in northeast India.
A mob was running riot in the market, and Ahmed knew his shop wouldn’t be spared. “So, he left the shop, taking only the account ledger of his shop containing all his financial transactions and records,” Ahmed said.
Tension had previously flared in the early hours of the day between the local Hindus and Muslims in the area after a Muslim driver of a car refused to pay a subscription to a local Hindu club for Durga Puja, a major Hindu festival. The driver and a passenger, both Muslims, were also allegedly assaulted by the members of the club.
The Kadamtala subdivision, which includes the market as well, has a mixed population of Hindus and Muslims, with Hindus forming more than 64 percent of the population and Muslims accounting for nearly 35 perent. Muslims, the state’s largest minority group, also make up about 9 percent of Tripura’s population of 3.6 million.
Muslims in Kadamtala and the adjoining areas in the Hindu-majority North Tripura have traditionally paid subscriptions to Durga Puja celebrations as a sign of harmony between Hindus and Muslims. Manik Saha, the state’s chief minister, had previously warned groups against forcefully seeking the payment of subscriptions for Durga Puja. The situation, on October 6, however, snowballed by the evening, as Hindu and Muslim groups clashed, leading to the heavy deployment of security personnel. The police baton-charged the mobs and opened fire, according to reports.
Seventeen people, mostly police personnel, were injured in the communal clashes and one person died. It was Alfeshani. “He was on the phone with me when a bullet hit him on the head,” Shahin Ahmed, Alfeshani’s brother, told media.
Bhanupada Chakraborty, who was North Tripura district’s superintendent of police at that time, however, said that police did not target anyone specifically, and Alfeshani’s cause of death is “under investigation”.
His family, however, dispute the police’s version. “He was shot in the head by the police,” Alifjaan Begum, Alfeshani’s mother, said, welling up. “The fire in my heart will never be doused. It was a murder.”
Earlier in the day, a delegation of Muslims asked the local police to arrest those who were responsible for the alleged assault on the Muslim driver and passenger. The Kadamtala police, in response, had also detained two people in connection with the alleged assault on the Muslim driver and the female passenger. Their detention came after a protest by the local Muslims but tensions spiraled further after another member of the Durga Puja organizing club made an “inflammatory comment” about Prophet Muhammad on Facebook, said a person who was part of the Muslim delegation, requesting anonymity. The media can independently verify the comment.
An irate Muslim group went looking for the young man in a Hindu-dominated neighborhood. “They pelted stones and broke down doors and windows, creating a scene of panic among the Hindus, and asked them to hand over the Hindu boy to them,” Bibhu Debnath, secretary of the Kadamtala Market Association, told media.
That in turn enraged Hindus. Groups affiliated with the Hindu majoritarian Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological fountainhead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which also rules in Tripura vandalized a few Muslim shops in the Kadamtala market. (Int’l News Desk)
