Since Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma took over on May 10, at least 23 people have been shot at while in police custody, with five dead. They had been held for crimes such as cattle-smuggling, rape, murder, drug-peddling, dacoity. This is apart from deaths of 10 militants in encounters in the past two months. INCIDENTS […]
Author: Tora Agarwala
A day in the life of suspected ‘foreigners’ in Assam
‘He said mai, I said baba, we both just cried.’ Tears flow, hope strains, and separated by bars, family members and inmates cling on to gifts pushed through a grille. On a Monday morning at the Kokrajhar District Jail, paper and patience are both in paucity. “We don’t provide paper,” snaps the jailor across a […]
Call Me By My Name: How ‘Miyas’ in Assam are reappropriating the slur
They are young, full of dreams, and are calling themselves the ‘Miyas’ of Assam. What does poetry, identity and the NRC offer them? For three years every day at 5 pm, Mirza Lutfar Rahman’s voice would crackle on radios across Assam: “Nomoskar, Yuvabani’loi xokolu srotak’e moi Mirza Lutfar Rehman’e swagatam jonaisu” (Greetings, I am Mirza […]
The Girl Who Chases Time
This article won the PoleStar Foundation’s Excellence in Journalism Award 2019, and was originally published in The Indian Express in July 2018. For most of her life, Hima Das has faced life’s challenges by running. She has run in rage and joy, after brawls and victories, and as if her life depended on it. The story of […]
Find Me On a Hill in Imphal
This article won the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award 2020, and was originally published in The Indian Express in August 2020. Several British and Japanese soldiers died in the hills of Manipur during some of the fiercest battles of WWII. They do not lie there forgotten. A team of “battlefield diggers” has been scouring this terrain […]
Children of Assam’s NRC: ‘Will They Take Me Away?’
This article received a Special Mention at the RedInk Awards 2021, and was originally published in The Indian Express in February 2020. Assam National Register of Citizens list hangs in a limbo. So does the fate of children out of it. “Gaari, Gaas Gujali, fuler bagan (Cars, trees and flower gardens)!” says Fatima, 12, her face lighting […]
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