'The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has held the use of phrases like ‘lal salam’ and ‘comrade’ are proof that Bittu Sonowal, a close aide of Assam farmers’ leader Akhil Gogoi, is a Maoist. Sonowal was arrested earlier this year and (along with Gogoi and two of this other aides) charged under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, by the NIA. These arrests were made in the wake of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests across Assam in December, 2019...'
'A 25-year-old village resident reported sick at the Basti district hospital on March 28. For more than two days, he was shunted from ward to ward and hospital to hospital before he finally died in Gorakhpur, the largest city in eastern Uttar Pradesh, 70 km from Basti. He would be the first confirmed coronavirus casualty in the state. The 48 hours leading up to his death paint a grim picture of provincial India’s health infrastructure and bare the lack of preparedness or even training to handle the pandemic...'
'Police opened fire in the air in Assam's Bongaigaon district on Saturday morning to disperse an unruly mob at a market that attacked the security personnel when asked to abide by the lockdown order, an officer said. None was injured in the melee, he said...'
'Ten inmates of Assam's six detention centres, where declared or convicted "foreigners" are kept, died in last one year, Lok Sabha was informed on Tuesday. Union Minister of State for Home G Kishan Reddy said as many as 3,331 people have been lodged at the six detention centres in Assam, while another such facility with a capacity to put 3,000 people is under construction in the state...'
'India’s score has shown the biggest decline among the world’s 25 largest democracies in the new report from Freedom House, the oldest American organisation devoted to the support and defence of democracy around the world. The steep fall has been blamed on three actions of the Narendra Modi government: the unilateral annulment of the semi-autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir, the implementation of the National Register of Citizens in Assam and the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)...'
'As the world fumbles for a cure to the deadly novel coronavirus which has claimed thousands of lives across the world, a BJP legislator in Assam on Monday left the state assembly astounded by saying that the remedy may be 'gaumutra' (cow urine) and 'gobar' (cow dung). Suman Haripriya claimed that cow urine and cow dung are helpful in curing deadly diseases like cancer. "We all know that cow dung is very helpful. Likewise, when cow urine is sprayed, it purifies an area... I believe something similar could be done with 'gaumutra' and 'gobar' to cure coronavirus (disease),"...'
'A mob of nearly 40 men from right-wing outfits gathered outside a college lecturer’s house in Silchar, Assam, who was arrested for posting derogatory remarks about the prime minister, and asked his family “what kind of Hindus” they were after they found no photos of gods, The Wire reported on Saturday. The incident occurred on Friday, shortly after police acted on the complaint to arrest Souradeep Sengupta, a guest lecturer at Gurucharan College, from his residence. Sengupta had written about the violence in Delhi and the role of the Hindutva forces in it on his Facebook page...'
'A teacher at Silchar’s Gurcharan College was arrested on Friday night for posting “objectionable material on Facebook”, confirmed the police in Cachar. Earlier in the day, the students of Gurcharan College, Silchar, registered an FIR against their teacher Souradeep Sengupta for “making derogatory remarks and abusing the Sanatan Dharma”. “He also tried to incite communal violence by making inflammatory comments against the Hindu community,” stated the complaint filed by 10 students of GC college...'
'Jabeda Begum, a woman whose petition challenging the order of a tribunal that had declared her as a foreigner was dismissed by the Gauhati High Court, has gone into hiding, fearing that she will be sent to a detention centre. The family said that the police raided the house earlier this week even though they had said they will follow due procedure...
'The fate of over 1.9 million people who have been left out of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam now rests with the Foreigners Tribunals. For the last 15 years, Foreigners Tribunals have wreaked havoc in Assam by arbitrarily denying people their citizenship. Riddled with bias, they have declared Indian citizens to be foreigners for minor spelling mistakes in their names, their inability to provide detailed documents or recall minute ancestral details dating back 50 years or more.
