On Friday afternoon, Hasina Bano sat in the narrow courtyard outside her home, her legs stretched out in front of her, and cried. A woman h...
On Friday afternoon, Hasina Bano sat in the narrow courtyard outside her home, her legs stretched out in front of her, and cried. A woman hugged her from behind. Another sat next to her and waved a hand fan in a smooth circular motion to shake off the humid September heat and perhaps Bano’s immense grief. The same few words kept punctuating Bano’s sobs: “Amar baba mare dilo”. They killed my son.
Her youngest son, 12-year-old Sheikh Farid, had died the previous day. He fell to police bullets during an eviction drive not too far from where they lived, in a village called Dholpur-3 on the banks of the Brahmaputra river in the Sipajhar area of Assam’s Darrang district.
According to the police, residents facing eviction launched an attack, forcing them to retaliate with bullets. Residents of Dholpur-3 have blamed the police for charging at them with batons even as they dismantled their own homes, leading to an escalation.
Much of Thursday’s events are still wreathed in a cloud of confusion: when the police opened fire, how many people were hit, how many died, who was at which hospital in which town.
But the death of 12-year-old Farid was one of the first confirmed pieces of...
