The people of the Northeast have every right to live and work anywhere in the country and are entitled to equal respect, home minister P. Chidambaram said in New Delhi on Friday. ‘Northeast citizens are as much Indian as you and I. They can come to Delhi, live in Delhi, work in Delhi, study in Delhi and they are entitled to equal respect and equal rights,’ Chidambaram told reporters here. His statement came in the wake of a spate of attacks on women from the Northeast in Delhi. Chidambaram ruled out registration of people from the Northeast living here. ‘Every citizen of the country is free to travel in any part of India except in some inner-line areas of the border. There is no system of registration.’ There has been a number of attacks on women from the region staying in Delhi. Last week, a teenaged Naga girl was strangled and later burnt in south Delhi by an IIT scholar who attempted to rape her. Another girl from the region was allegedly molested by some boys in southeast Delhi’s New Friends Colony. Students from the Northeast staged a protest in the national capital against police inaction on Friday. (Text: PTI, picture: AP)