YET another attack on a Santal family shows that the authorities have failed to protect and ensure the rights of the community. A union council chair and his associates reportedly attacked members of a Santal family, including a woman, over a land dispute at Gobindaganj in Gaibandha on January 3. The Rajahar union council chair and his associates started dirt-filling a plot occupied by the Santal community at Rajabirat. Two local Santal young men, Nicholas Murmu and British Soren, who resisted the dirt-filling, were beaten. Later that night, the council chair’s associates set fire to Soren’s house and assaulted Soren’s mother as she tried to resist the attack. She was being treated in Shaheed Ziaur Rahman Medical College Hospital in Bogura. A case has been filed with the Gobindaganj police and the uinion council chair has been arrested. What is alarming is that such attacks on the people of the Santal community, mostly over land disputes, have, as a statement by 47 concerned citizens issued on January 7 rightly points out, continued and successive governments have failed to ensure the rights of the marginalised community.
What is further shocking is that there appears to be political and administrative complicity in grabbing the land of the Santals. The perpetuation of injustice to Santals is believed to have continued because of a failure to ensure justice in earlier attacks and land grab. For an example, it has been more than eight years since a police eviction drive at Sahebganj-Bagda in Gaibandha left at least three Santal people dead and the entire village, home to 1,500 families, burnt, yet justice has not been ensured for the aggrieved and displaced Santals. A video footage that the Qatar-based news channel Al-Jazeera aired on December 11, 2016 showed a group of law enforcers setting fire to the houses of the Santals on November 6. A government investigation later found three police personnel, although the footage showed about a dozen or two, to be involved in the attacks on Santal houses. The three are reported to have been suspended. They were not arrested. No further action against them could be heard of. A couple of cases were filed by the victims, but the investigation soon stalled. A few cases were also filed by the police against the victims that remained tools of harassment. Justice has also not been served to the family of Santal rights activist Alfred Soren, killed in daylight in 2000 when he resisted land grab.
The interim government that pledges its commitment to establishing a pluralist society and ensuring everyone’s rights must, therefore, credibly investigate the arson attack and expeditiously bring the perpetrators to justice. The authorities must also serve justice in earlier attacks. The authorities also need to protect the right of the Santals to their land.