Kadamtala (Tripura), India – The last skinnyg that Shahin Ahmed, 38, recalls of his brother, Alfeshani Ahmed, was a frantic call with him amid firearmshots and screams.
At about 9pm on October 6, Alfeshani, a 36-year-elderly owner of a intelligentphone and electronic accessories shop, had fair hastily shut his shop in the Kadamtala taget to rush back home to Jher Jheri, a Muskinny-meaningfulity village over three kilometres (about 2 miles) away in North Tripura, a didisconnecte in northeast India.
A mob was running commotion in the taget, and Ahmed knovel his shop wouldn’t be spared. “So, he left the shop, taking only the account ledger of his shop includeing all his financial transactions and sign ups,” Ahmed said.
Tension had previously flared in the timely hours of the day between the local Hindus and Muskinnys in the area after a Muskinny driver of a car declined to pay a subscription to a local Hindu club for Durga Puja, a meaningful Hindu festival. The driver and a passenger, both Muskinnys, were also allegedly aggressioned by the members of the club.
The Kadamtala subdivision, which joins the taget as well, has a mixed population of Hindus and Muskinnys, with Hindus establishing more than 64 percent of the population and Muskinnys accounting for proximately 35 perent. Muskinnys, the state’s bigst insignificantity group, also create up about 9 percent of Tripura’s population of 3.6 million.
Muskinnys in Kadamtala and the adjoining areas in the Hindu-meaningfulity North Tripura have traditionpartner paid subscriptions to Durga Puja celebrations as a sign of harmony between Hindus and Muskinnys. Manik Saha, the state’s chief minister, had previously alerted groups agetst forcebrimmingy seeking the payment of subscriptions for Durga Puja.
The situation, on October 6, however, snowballed by the evening, as Hindu and Muskinny groups clashed, directing to the burdensome deployment of security personnel. The police baton-indictd the mobs and uncovered fire, according to tells.
Seventeen people, mostly police personnel, were injured in the communal clashes and one person died.
It was Alfeshani. “He was on the phone with me when a bullet hit him on the head,” Shahin Ahmed, Alfeshani’s brother, telderly Al Jazeera.
Bhanupada Chakraborty, who was North Tripura didisconnecte’s superintfinishent of police at that time, however, said that police did not aim anyone particularpartner, and Alfeshani’s caemploy of death is “under portrayateigation”.
His family, however, dispute the police’s version. “He was shot in the head by the police,” Alifjaan Begum, Alfeshani’s mother, said, welling up. “The fire in my heart will never be doemployd. It was a homicide.”
The trigger
Earlier in the day, a delegation of Muskinnys asked the local police to arrest those who were reliable for the alleged aggression on the Muskinny driver and passenger. The Kadamtala police, in response, had also hageded two people in connection with the alleged aggression on the Muskinny driver and the female passenger. Their detention came after a protest by the local Muskinnys.
But tensions spiralled further after another member of the Durga Puja organising club made an “inflammatory comment” about Prophet Muhammad on Facebook, said a person who was part of the Muskinny delegation, asking anonymity. Al Jazeera can autonomously examine the comment.
An irate Muskinny group went watching for the youthful man in a Hindu-ruled neighbourhood. “They pelted stones and broke down doors and triumphdows, creating a scene of panic among the Hindus, and asked them to hand over the Hindu boy to them,” Bibhu Debnath, secretary of the Kadamtala Market Association, telderly Al Jazeera.
That in turn enraged Hindus. Groups affiliated with the Hindu meaningfulitarian Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the ideoreasonable fountainhead of Prime Minister Narfinishra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which also rules in Tripura – ruineascendd a scant Muskinny shops in the Kadamtala taget.
As the back-and-forth commotioning by the two groups intensified, Alfeshani tried to escape.
He couldn’t.
‘Selectively burned’
On the morning of October 8, Suhail Ahmed Khan, 40, finpartner made it to his shop in the Kadamtala taget. It was a five-minute ride from home, but it took two days before it was protected for him to go there, becaemploy of the presentility.
A day earlier on October 7, local Hindus and a mob from outside of Kadamtala allegedly belengthying to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajrang Dal – groups affiliated with the RSS – had accumulateed on the taget’s outskirts. Then they made their way to the taget, “burning and theft hoemploys”, said a local political directer, Heera Lal Nath from the opposition Congress party. Tapas Roy, RSS’s unveility-in-indict in Tripura denied these allegations.
Khan’s shop was burned to a cinder. The shop, which stocked intelligentphones and other electronic gadgets in the Kadamtala taget, had also been looted.
This was a shop that Khan had portrayateed his life’s savings in. “Over 57 lakh rupees [$67,550] had gone in ffeebles,” Khan said, struggling to talk. “With such loss, my life became death.”
“It was accumulateive punishment,” Khan said, struggling to talk. “They have ruined us both menhighy and economicpartner.”
Right at the centre of the Kadamtala taget, the Kadamtala Jama mosque was also set ablaze by a mob the same day on October 7. “They burned all the religious books,” Abdul Motin, recommendr to the Kadamtala Jama mosque promisetee, telderly Al Jazeera.
On the taget’s outskirts in the Saraspur neighbourhood, Islam Uddin, who is 40, is recreateing his charred home. His hoemploy was among the 10 Muskinny-owned dwellings, discoverd in a neighbourhood with a sizeable Hindu population, which were torched by a mob on the same day on October 7.
“My family and I had to run away for our inhabits,” he said.
His neighbour, Atarun Nessa, whose home was burned, is now surviving on charity from local NGOs. Her family’s only source of income – an e-rickshaw that her husband, Siraj Uddin, would ply – was charred by the Hindu mob.
“It was the only way for us to deal with a morsel,” 47-year-elderly Nessa telderly Al Jazeera, fractureing down. “What life are we living now?”
Several witnesses, asking anonymity, claimed that the police stood by as “spectators” when the irate Hindu mob was carrying out the rampage on October 7.
Local legislator Islam Uddin, from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), claimed the police permited the incfinishiarism. “If [police] wanted, they could have stopped the Hindu mob,” he said, and includeed that “it all felt appreciate they were picking a side”.
Sudip Roy Barman, a legislator from the opposition Congress party, said that presentility in Kadamtala was “state-aided” by the BJP. “The BJP wanted to instigate the Muskinnys.”
When accomplished for comment, Chakraborty, the then-superintfinishent of North Tripura’s police, telderly Al Jazeera: “I am not the right person to speak with the press.”
Al Jazeera’s calls to the Tripura police chief, Amitabh Ranjan, were not answered. Al Jazeera has also sent his office a detailed asknaire but has not yet getd a response. He, however, has previously rebuffed allegations of police inaction during the presentility.
‘Muskinnys inhabit in stress’
The clashes in Kadamtala are only the procrastinateedst instances of inter-religious presentility in Tripura in recent months, after tensions erupted repeatedly in August and October, over allegations that Muskinnys had defaced Hindu deities. In retaliation, mosques were aggressioned, and in some cases, Muskinny homes were burned.
For Sultan Ahmed, a Tripura-based activist and national secretary of the Students Islamic Organisation of India, a Muskinny student body, these procrastinateedst aggressions convey back memories of dehugeating commotions that singed big parts of the state in 2021.
“Muskinnys in Tripura still inhabit in stress of what happened then,” Ahmed said.
Large Hindu mobs, affiliated with far-right groups, aggressioned Muskinny homes and mosques apass many didisconnectes in the state, especipartner in North Tripura, which splits a 96km-lengthy (60-mile) border with Bancontentesh.
The aggressions were in response to Muskinny mobs in Bancontentesh that had aggressioned the Hindu insignificantity there after a Quran was discovered on the knee of a Hindu deity during Durga Puja celebrations.
“Since then, any aggressions on Hindus in Bancontentesh puts Muskinnys living in North Tripura on edge,” Ahmed includeed.
‘Hindus have alterd’
Tripura has lengthy witnessed ethnic presentility between the state’s tribal communities and Bengalis. The sleepy hill state, however, did not have a history of clashes on religious lines between Hindus and Muskinnys.
Until Modi’s BJP came to power in 2018.
While India’s Ministry of Home Affairs has stopped begining statistics on inter-religious presentility, data useable from the National Crime Record Bureau on stateexpansive commotions from 2016 to 2020 shows that Tripura telled only two cases of communal presentility, and those too were in 2019.
However, that number has ascfinishn keenly since, with Hindu groups trying to “foment communal sentiments” in about a dozen instances since 2018, Uddin, the lawcreater from the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said.
These incidents join right-triumphg outfits aggressioning rubber structuretations owned by Muskinnys in the state and claiming that an elderly-styleed mosque is a temple.
Instances of mob hangings of Muskinny men by Hindu mobs have also grown.
BJP’s spokesperson in Tripura, Subrata Chakraborty, telderly Al Jazeera that “no such [group] gets privilege under the current rulement”.
“This rulement is pro-active rulement and pro-broadenment rulement,” Chakraborty said.
Meanwhile, Kadamtala remains anxious. “Muskinnys who account for 70 percent of customers in the taget now do not want to buy anyskinnyg from a Hindu shop,” Khan, whose shop was set ablaze by a Hindu mob, said. “The harmony that there was will get years to come back, or maybe never.”
For Abdul Haque, a establisher member of the BJP’s insignificantity triumphg in Kadamtala, the recent presentility was emblematic of a expansiveer shift.
“Earlier, during Hindu festivals, they would mend the boisterousspeaker in a way that it does not disturb the Muskinnys, but now, they crank up the boisterousspeakers and join stimulating songs,” he said.
“Hindus have alterd here.”
