A grab of The Telegraph report on the stripping

Guwahati, Dec. 28: The National Human Rights Commission has sent notices to Assam chief secretary P.C. Sharma and director-general of police K.T.D. Singh to submit a report in two weeks on the stripping of an Adivasi woman on the streets of Guwahati on November 24.

The rights panel has taken suo motu cognisance of the incident based on a report that appeared in The Telegraph on November 27 as the incident reflected the failure of the government in protecting the dignity of women which resulted in the violation of human rights.

Sources in the chief minister’s office today said the rights panel served the notices on December 21 giving them two weeks to submit a report. The sources said the government would do so in the next few days. “We are ready as we have nothing to hide. There was a failure and we have taken every possible step to restore normality, arrested the four accused of stripping the girl and also offered to bear her education expenditure,” the source said.

But the report could still be delayed because of the forthcoming panchayat election. “Almost everybody is busy with the preparations of the panchayat election. It is a huge exercise. But we will submit the report soon. We received the report late,” he said, without mentioning exactly when they received it.

In the notice, the rights panel has referred to the news report which showed a young girl running down a lane naked, stripped by ethnic rioters, as leering youths clicked away on their mobile phone cameras.

The Assam Human Rights Commission also issued a notice to the chief secretary and the home commissioner on November 30 to submit a report after conducting an inquiry on whether the Beltola incident could have been prevented.

They were given 45 days to prepare the report.

The Assam panel wanted the government’s report to be elaborate even to the extent of mentioning the compensation paid to the killed/injured/stripped.

“The deadline will end in the second week of January,” a source in the rights panel said.

Trouble broke out in the Beltola area of Guwahati on November 24 when Adivasi students marching towards Dispur Last Gate to demand Scheduled Tribe status started ransacking shops and damaging vehicles.

Taken aback by the rampage, local residents retaliated, leaving one person dead and over 300 injured. It was during this counter-attack that the girl was stripped.