On June 2, Assam’s newly appointed chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma took to Twitter to list out the names of 22 people accused of assaul...
On June 2, Assam’s newly appointed chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma took to Twitter to list out the names of 22 people accused of assaulting a doctor at a Covid-19 care centre in Hojai district the previous day.
All of them were Muslim.
“I am personally monitoring this investigation and I promise that justice will be served,” he said in a Twitter thread which was retweeted over 7,000 times and greeted with some exceptionally vile anti-Muslim remarks by a section of his followers.
The accused, according to the police, were related to a patient who had reportedly died of Covid-19-related complications at the centre. The attack was seemingly provoked by what they believed was negligence by the doctor in attending to the patient.
The assault on the doctor in Hojai was not singularly unique. At least three other instances were reported in Assam in the month of June alone. In one particularly troubling incident, an 81-year-old doctor serving at a tea garden in Biswanath district was attacked allegedly by people upset over his counsel to the estate’s management to impose Covid-19-related restrictions.
Neither the chief minister nor his office has issued any public statements or tweets about any of the other incidents so far.
Disclosures by the police reveal that...
