According to local police, the arrests were made on the basis of identification of the criminals whose mind boggling brutalities were comprehensively and continuously telecast over several TV channels nationwide. They did not make the slightest attempt to hide their faces or resort to even minimal forms of concealment. Their depravity left viewers mentally scarred and benumbed with terror!

Says hardware professional Shounak Mukherjee, ”Their 'couldn't care less' approach was deliberate. The howling bloodthirsty mob was driving the message that in Nagaland, this was how people suspected to be Bangladeshi 'infiltrators' were liable to be treated and to hell with world opinion! It does not augur well for India's democratic polity and far worse, challenges the basis of civilised existence.”

State Chief Minister T.R. Zeliang initiated action against the culprits under strong pressure from the centre. But the impression that the police, jail staff and other authorities had not really exerted themselves to the save Farid, who was no Bangladeshi infiltrator but was as Indian as you or me, was hard to shake off among viewers. The fact that his alleged crime remained unproved and the local authorities are yet to come up with any official statement or medical report confirming a rape, hardly enhances the image of the local administration.

Consider the facts. Even while accepting the official version that the relaxing of curfew and sec 144 orders had enabled the mob to carry out the lynching of Farid, it remains hard to absolve the state authorities of certain culpability in what happened afterwards.

The howling mob over 5,000 strong followed a script that might have been taken out of the accounts of the 'nigger lynchings' in the American deep south as depicted by Richard Wright and others. Farid was dragged out, stripped and paraded naked over a distance of 10 kilometres! He was brutally thrashed all the way, before being tied to a motorbike and dragged endlessly.

The mob even abused his dead body by trying to burn it and then putting up his remains on a local tower, as people clapped and cheered.

This mayhem could not have been over in a matter of minutes. Only towards the end the police made a show of force, opening fire into the air. One person was reportedly killed. The point is, even if the jail staff and the local thana policemen were outnumbered, what had prevented the authorities from calling in reinforcements from the paramilitary or even the army, in this age of the mobile phones? And what had stopped the police from opening fire at the very beginning, instead of at the end when the mob's bloodlust had been satiated.

There is strong reason to believe that even the token action taken in Dimapore following the lynching would not have resulted but for the strong reaction and disapproval expressed from New Delhi and Guwahati. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh immediately asked for a detailed report. Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi lost no time on contacting his counterpart once Farid's status as an Indian was confirmed. Describing the incidents as brutal, heinous and barbarous, Gogoi said sadly, 'The victim was a genuine Indian citizen!’

Far from being an 'illegal Bangladeshi immigrant’ (IBI in local Naga parlance), Farid hailed from a village at Karimganj in the Bengali speaking Barak Valley of Assam. His father and brother were and are in the Indian army. He was in the used car trade and living in Nagaland for eight years. As for the rape charge, some CCTV footage had shown him walking into a hotel with a Naga woman without any apparent sign of tension. The lady complained to the police against him on Feb 23 and a day later he was arrested. His bail prayer was refused.

Local ethnic tensions mounted and boiled over in the following days. There was a vicious media campaign especially in the English press, denouncing the increase of illegal Bangladeshi Muslim population in the state. The very identity of original inhabitants was under threat, it was said. One paper specifically mentioned the possibility that there could be big trouble in the area because passions were running high over the alleged rape --- words which came true!

Significantly, the violence was not just directed against Bangladeshi immigrants. The mob later ransacked and looted small shops and establishments run by non locals, forcing them to flee. At least 10 units were destroyed.

The reaction was the sharpest in Assam which has had its share of territorial and other problems with Nagaland. All major political parties, including the Congress, the BJP, the AGP , the AASU, the AAMSU and the minority-dominated AUDF, strongly condemned the incident. Truckers belonging to 17 organisations refused to ply their vehicles into Nagaland citing law and order problems. As the supply of essential goods dried up, tensions rose over possible price increases in Nagaland.

Apart from reinforcing curfew orders in parts of the state, Nagaland authorities announced the suspension of the DM, the SP and the jail Super following the lynching. Tension continues to prevail in Dimapore and other areas and clearly it would take long before normalcy returned. It remains to be seen what punishment is handed out to the killers of Farid. But reactions among Nagas remained equivocal.

In Assam there were bandhs in the Barak valley after Farid's mutilated body reached Karim Ganj. His brother Jamaluddin blamed the Naga authorities for what had happened and pleaded for punishment for those involved in a 'conspiracy' to malign his brother.

To this day, the Nagaland government has not announced even a token compensation for Farid's family, or expressed any regrets over the incident. Most Naga organisations have condemned the as yet unproved rape, avoiding comment on the mob violence.

'It seems some ethnicity-based outfits in the Northeast are employing cleansing tactics similar to what Myanmar administration has adopted towards the Rohingya Muslims in the Rakhine province,' says one Kolkata-based analyst.'New Delhi had better take note and curb this very strongly, or there will be trouble without end in the region,' he feared. (IPA Service)