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In Assam, houses where rape and murder were alleged were razed to the ground as part of a campaign against land grabbing

Theo

Goalpara (Assam):

The houses of five people, including three accused of rape and murder, were demolished in Assam’s Goalpara district on Sunday over alleged land grabbing by the government, officials said.

According to a senior district administration official, the residents had built their houses on government land in Tangabari village within the revenue limits of Dudhnoi revenue district and were served notices to vacate these buildings.

“As they did not comply with the requests to leave the country, an eviction operation was carried out to remove the encroachments,” he told PTI.

Of the five people whose houses were destroyed during the day, three were accused of raping two minor girls and being involved in the killing of a youth in a subsequent clash in May, another official at the Dudhnoi district office said.

“However, the eviction has nothing to do with the case. The criminal case is currently being investigated by the police. We carried out the eviction operation only to remove the encroachment on state property,” he claimed.

However, locals claimed that the alleged intruders had already been served with the warnings on Saturday and not 15 days ago, as stated by the administration.

In the presence of a large police force, bulldozers were used to tear down the concrete houses with metal roofs.

Family members were seen removing their belongings from their homes and loading them onto tractor carts before leaving the area.

On May 3, two underage girls were allegedly raped by three people. Subsequently, clashes broke out between the residents of the girls’ village and the accused. One youth was seriously injured in the clashes and succumbed to his injuries on May 17.

Assam Tourism Minister Jayanta Malla Baruah visited the deceased’s residence on Saturday and told reporters that such attacks on the tribal population would not be tolerated.

In a case involving the destruction of the houses of several pretrial detainees, the Government of Assam had to compensate those who allegedly set fire to a police station in Nagaon district for destroying their houses on the orders of the Gauhati High Court.

The government had paid Rs 1 million each for two ‘pucca’ houses and Rs 2.5 million each for five ‘kutcha’ housing units, which were razed to the ground by the administration at Batadrava in Nagaon in May 2022.

In November 2022, then Chief Justice RM Chhaya had reprimanded the Assam government for its actions and asked if they “need anything tomorrow, then they will dig up my courtroom”.

The Gauhati High Court had stressed at the time that “no penal law provides for the demolition of a house”, even if an authority is investigating a “very serious case”.

Judge Chhaya had even equated the destruction of the houses with an act of “gang war” and asked the Home Ministry to find better ways to conduct its investigations.

The Assam government had in January 2023 informed the Gauhati High Court that appropriate action would be taken against errant officials who had demolished the houses of the accused. PTI TR COR TR BDC

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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