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Land-grabbers attack adivasis
Faizul Khan Tanim visits the indigenous Oraon community in Naogaon who were recently attacked by local land-grabbers, leaving 16 houses gutted and many injured
photo by Al-Emrun Garjon
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At 7:00am on November 5, a neighbourhood of the indigenous Oraon community in Uttar Kazipara village of Patnitala Upazilla of Naogaon district woke up to a violent assault by local hoodlums who set fire on 16 thatched mud houses, broke them, looted goods, and burnt the rest that could not bagged.
More astonishingly, the attack was launched upon the women of the community as most of the men had gone to work. ‘We had earlier heard that they would attack us on the night of November 4 so we had set up strong guard and vigilance to resist them, throughout the night,’ says Mohishshor Karkata, a community member. ‘But nothing happened that night.’
‘But following morning, the gang decided to instigate their attack shamelessly on our unarmed women as we all men went to work. They torched our houses, beat us mercilessly with sticks, and hacked our houses using axes’ Karkata added.
The villagers alleged that influential miscreants Idris Ali and his brother Shafiuddin along with the help of two Union Parisad members Helal and Jewel from Sheikhpara and Kazipara came with a gang of 25 to 30 people, attacked the neighbourhood and injured at least 15 people. The attack was the result of long-standing feud to evict the inhabitants from their ancestral land.
Almost 15 to 16 homeless families now live under the open sky without proper treatment and food.
Shanti Kujor, a woman in her late 20’s was badly injured. She was still traumatised from her experience while narrating what happened, ‘when the gang came and indiscriminately started beating us, we tried to resist but had to fall back and hide in other houses that were not blazed. The attackers then went on a rampage, broke in to those houses where we were hiding, dragged us out and attacked us haphazardly’.
Amongst other victims, a woman Dulali Tudu and a man Khuyyo Kujur said their rampage continued for almost an hour until residents from nearby villages came to their aid.
The villagers immediately called the chairman of Dibor Union Parisad of Patnitala Upazilla, Md Anisur Rahman Sheikh, who called for police help. Six of the injured were admitted to the nearby Sapahar Hospital with critical injuries and there are three or four injured villagers now, who still seek medical attention. There are scars on some of the villagers, still, and several of them cannot move properly because of the severe beating.
The indigenous villagers complained that as the police came to the spot, the officer-in-charge (OC) of Patnitala police station Shakiruddin Bhuiyan behaved in rude manner from the very beginning. The OC kept on blaming the villagers for erecting thatched houses on the land. However, the police arrested five people in connection with the assault, from the spot, Union Parisad member Helal, Lutfar Rahman, Azizar Rahman, Ruhul Amin Sagar and Motibul from Sheikhpara.
Earlier, Patnitala Upazilla Nirbahi Office sources and Chairman of Dibor Union Parisad of Patnitala Upazilla, Md Anisur Rahman Sheikh said that more than one acre of government land was permanently leased to Idris Ali and Shafiuddin in 1990. The indigenous people resisted leasing out this land from the beginning citing it as their ancestral property. The matter was then taken to court in 1993 and has remained unresolved and in shady waters since.
‘Around 1995, there was a big robbery in the village in which Shafiuddin, brother of Idris Ali was involved and later jailed for 10 years. The situation started getting out of hand after that,’ added Sheikh.
The villagers claim that they are still living under a lot of a risk as a hoodlum Kajol from Kazipara is still threatening to evict them from their land by any means. They also added that the adivasis hardly have any registered land and on whatever portion they build their thatched houses on, Idris-Shafiuddin faction wants to take away that as well.
According to the villagers, there are 45 to 50 families in their community and everyone is uneducated except two. Amongst the two, one of them passed his SSC exam and the other failed in it– this is one of the primary reasons why they rely on thumbprints as signatures and comply to anything which is spoon-fed to them by any literate man.
Father Bernard Rozario from the nearby Chandpukur Catholic Church said, ‘we have also heard about the dispute and what happened on November 5. I think as most of these ethnic villagers are uneducated, they have written off their lands to land grabbers at various times not understanding the repercussion’.
A schoolteacher of Kazipara village Shurjomoni said that most of these indigenous people do not have deeds of their own land. A number of dishonest people actually forge documents taking advantage of their illiteracy to grab their lands.
The Upazilla Nirbahi Officer of Patnitala Thana, Naogaon District, Md Abdul Mannan, said, ‘action was taken immediately. Five miscreants were arrested while Idris and Shafiuddin fled. However, there was a meeting on November 14 at the Upazilla Nirbahi Office where an Upazilla khas land management committee (Upazilla krishi khas jomi babosthapona o bondobosto committee) was setup. The committee headed by Abdul Mannan himself, proposed to District khas jomi babosthapona o bondobosto committee to provide title deeds to the 15 indigenous people who were hurt in the dispute for their land and cancel the previously declared government khas lands to Idris and Shafiuddin.
OC Shakiruddin Bhuiyan and SI Shiraj from Patnitala police station said they are on high alert and would not allow any untoward incident anymore. They said that although they have limited manpower but they are arranging police patrols once or twice everyday.
The UP chairman Anisur Rahman added that a total of nine gram police (village police) have been deployed in shifts to avoid any sort of trouble.
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