More than 200 students from Manipur and other north-eastern states, studying in the capital, came together Sunday at India Gate for a silent candlelight vigil to demand a proper investigation of the alleged murder of a Manipuri student in Bangalore. A rally was also held in Bangalore to demand justice for the student
Loitam Richard, a second semester student of the Acharya School of Architecture in north Bangalore, was found dead his hostel room on April 18. Is being reported that he had a brawl with a fellow students over TV remote during which he was severely beaten and had received severe head injuries.
He died because of excessive internal bleeding and brain haemorrhage. But from the very beginning of the case there is a shroud of suspicion over the intentions of college authorities as well as his fellow students. The attemts to hush up the matter are clear from the fact that his roommates claim that they did not hear any screams to know whether he was being beaten or not. Along with this no one is able to give any tangible explanation over the fact as for how could Loitam climb the upper berth of his hostel room where he is said to be dead in his sleep.
“The college authorities are claiming that Richard Loitam died from injuries suffered in an April 15 bike accident. However, preliminary post mortem report says that he was beaten to death,” said Arzyaman, a Delhi university student and a representative for the protest organisers, Manipuri Students’ Association Delhi (MSAD). There are also attempts being made to prove that Loitam was a drug addict and he might have died of drug abuse.
Meanwhile the college has only suspended two students from hostel and not from college. They have reported the incident of brawl to the police but even after so many days no case has been registered against Loitam’s assaulters. “Police has rather filed it as a case of death due to unnatural reasons, effectively putting his death to be a suicide told Arzyaman.
The protesters claimed the instance as an example of racial bias by the police, besides calling for conversion of the case into one of homicide, investigation of the incident by Central Bureau of Investigation and strict action against the guilty as well as the hostel authorities.
Before sitting for the candle-light vigil, the protesters had assembled at Jantar Mantar and raised slogans against racial profiling of students from Northeast.
Prominent Manipuri writer and activist, Binalakshmi Nepram was also present at the protest. A group of students have also launched a campaign on Facebook seeking ‘justice’ for Loitam and to treat the death as murder.
This incident really presents a bizarre and pathetic state of affairs of the college administration and police who are trying to blame the victim himself and bail out the culprits from the heinous crime that they committed over the most trivial issue.
Now if this is not an example of racial discrimination then either we are living in complete delusion or we are blind to the suffering of the “Other” as somewhere in our hearts we fail to except people of North East outside of the realms of collective illusion that we term as United India.
–Agencies–