Dhalpur, Darrang district (Assam): “Are you asking about Farid? The boy they killed two years ago?” 

Taij Uddin, a lean man in his 60s, sat on a bench along a stream called Nau Nodi or new river in Dhalpur, a vast swathe of fertile sandbar or char on the bank of the Brahmaputra in northern Assam’s Darrang district. The chars are shifting islands of fertile land shaped by the great river, whose average discharge is the fifth largest among rivers worldwide. 

It was Thursday, 23 September 2021, when Sheikh Farid, described by his family as a playful boy, was more cheerful than ever, said his mother, Haseena Bano, a middle-aged woman, in evident sorrow as she recalled that day. 

The reason, Bano explained, was that he had gone to the Dhalpur post office—a couple of km from his home in a village called Dhalpur 2—to pick up his new Aadhar card, which would give him a much-valued identification number in a land where identity and identification are fiercely contested issues. 

Farid was unaware of the tension in the area that day. Hundreds of armed police and district officials swarmed the char to continue an eviction in Dhalpur 1 and 3 that had begun three days earlier, on orders of the government of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.  

The evictions came three months after the BJP came to power. One of its election planks was to free the state’s land from “illegal encroachers”. 

Sarma’s government ordered officials to recover 77,420 bighas (25,593 acres) of land from "illegal encroachers" to make way for an experimental agricultural project in the neighbouring Garukhuti area to "engage indigenous youths in agricultural practices”. 

Eviction drives on 20 and 23 September 2021 removed, according to the government, 800 families in Dhalpur char from 8000 bighas (nearly 2,600 acres or nearly 2,000 football fields) of what they said was State land. These families protested their eviction and were not given alternative land.

In January 2022, a survey by local revenue officers cited 2,051 families, which included those alleged encroachers who were told they would get land elsewhere if they left, so that the government could site the farm project there. 

The figure of 2,051 families is itself in doubt because different government authorities cite different data: 700 families, the government told the Gauhati High Court; more than 1,000 families, the deputy commissioner said in a media interview; and the circle officer said 859 families in another interview.

The eviction drive from the sand bars was couched in revenue department legalese, and the claim that the land would be used to encourage indigenous Assamese youth in agriculture was contradicted by research (here and here) that indicated a shrinking interest in farming. 

For the mostly Bengali-speaking Muslim families on these and other char lands, the evictions were a familiar, recurring exercise over five decades of Assamese nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment, escalating as Sarma’s government couched its eviction programme in barely veiled anti-Muslim sentiment, accusing them of being “illegal immigrants” or “illegal-Bangladeshis”. 

In January 2021, BJP member of the legislative assembly (MLA) and minister Pijush Hazarika called on Assamese youth in the Lakhimpur district to “surpass Bangladeshi immigrants”, as Bengali-speaking Muslims are often referred to, in the state’s “agro-economy.” 

As Farid wound his way to the post office, many angry residents of Dhalpur 1 and 3, who said they had lived across the Dhalpur char for generations, protested the evictions. While allegations of land grabs were unsubstantiated, the settlers had indeed paid land taxes for decades, as Article 14 reported in October 2021.

The atmosphere grew tense, as police units poured in, Taij Uddin recalled. “People wanted a little more time to dismantle their houses and take out their belongings, but the police didn’t listen, so when the people protested, they rained bullets on us,” Taij Uddin said. “They didn’t care if it was a child or man. They kept firing.”

In Farid's house that day, Bano heard the gunshots and grew anxious. As news of the violence spread, a Facebook live video confirmed her worst fears and changed the family’s life forever. He was shot dead on his way back home by the district police, as the eviction drive turned violent, the video showed. 

Over 20 people were injured, including police personnel, and two people died, including Farid and a 30-year-old man called Moinul Haque, whose body was stomped on by a government photographer, recorded in this video, which went viral nationwide and revealed the depth of anti-Muslim feeling. 

Dhalpur 2, where Farid’s family lived, was not touched by the evictions. But Bano never saw her son alive again.

“He went out like a happy child, but he returned to me lifeless and bloodsoaked,” she said, sobbing, as neighbours comforted her or watched in silence.  “He was an innocent boy. Why did they have to kill him?”

‘Why Have The Police Not Acted Yet?’ 

On 6 October 2021, about two weeks after Farid died, his eldest brother Amir Hussain, 30, along with Ainuddin, 25, Moinul Haque’s younger brother, filed two first information reports (FIRs) against the district police and the district administration, accusing them of murder.  

“Without any reason, they [the police] started lathi-charging the crowd which caused a fracas,” Ainuddin’s FIR read. “Seeing this, my brother [Moinul Haque] got agitated, but the police, instead of restraining him through any other means, shot him dead.”

In the viral video, Haque, armed with a bamboo cane, charges two police constables and a government photographer, later identified as Bijay Shanker Baniya. As he swings the cane, a policeman shoots him in the abdomen with an AK-47 rifle. 

Haque falls to the ground. Several policemen continue to beat him with lathis. Baniya—arrested later after a public outcry—stomps, kicks and punches the body as a patch of blood spreads slowly on Haque’s chest. 

A later report said Haque charged at the armed police with a cane after seeing them beat a young girl with a baton. 

Hussain, Farid’s eldest brother, recounted in the FIR how the police fired at Farid’s chest. “For killing him undemocratically and unconstitutionally, I hope that justice will be served,” Hussain said in the FIR. 

Two years on, the two brothers find themselves in a Kafkaesque legal battle. Hussain, who is a daily wage worker, and Ainuddin, once a  peasant and now a daily wage labourer after the eviction, told Article 14 that they had made many trips to the Sipajhar police station, where the FIRs were registered. 

“But each time we went to the police station for an update, we were turned away,” Hussain said, frowning.

The FIR copies accessed by Article 14 confirmed that the complaints were registered at the Sipajhar Police Station on the same day and the officer in charge, inspector Sunil Kumar Dutta signed them. Sub inspector Bokul Gogoi was entrusted with the investigation of Ainuddin’s complaint, the FIR revealed.

Dutta was transferred the next year. The current head of the Sipajhar police station, Mukul Hazarika, did not respond to calls or texts for comment. 

The “investigation is in progress,” Prakash Sonowal, Darrang superintendent of police (SP) told Article 14, when we sought comment. 

“Why have the police not acted yet?” Ainuddin, Haque’s brother, asked, enraged. “What do I tell my parents? To his wife and children? Are they going to live with this injustice?” 

Haque’s mother, Maymana Begum, now lives with her husband and son Ainuddin in Darrang’s Kharupetia, a town known for the range of vegetables grown. She was disconsolate when we met her.

‘Our Lives Are Ruined’

“Shei guli’e amar fula’re maira nilo. Amar book ta khali koira lailo (That bullet killed my son. That bullet emptied my heart),” Maymana Begum said, as Mokhbul Ali, her 74-year-old husband, whose mental condition worsened after Haque’s death kept repeating, “police ...police”, an apparent reference to the traumatic experience of his son’s death, still fresh in his memory. 

“He cried for six months after the incident,” said Maymana Begum. “His tears have dried up, but the trauma has not.”

About 50 km to the north away in Dhalpur 3, Haque’s children—Monzura Begum, 11, Mukasdis Ali, 5, and Moksedul, 15, who studies in Barpeta —live with his widow, Mumtaz Begum, across a shallow stream, a de facto border between those evicted, living now in make-shift tin shanties, and the Garukhuti project that was supposed to attract Assamese youth to farming.  

Mumtaz Begum’s youngest child, Mukasdas Ali still asked about his father, she said. 

“I don’t have the courage to answer most of his questions,” Mumtaz  Begum said, her lips trembling. “But what breaks my heart is that my children will never be able to visit their father’s grave as they (district officials) bulldozed the graveyard. There is nothing left.”  

Losing her husband, Haque, the only breadwinner in the family, coupled with the trauma of forced displacement has made her more nervous than ever. 

“I have lost my sleep, and peace and thinking about how to raise the children now,” said Mumtaz Begum, from a loosely erected tin shed that is now home. 

Haque was a doting husband to her, she said, providing for the family by selling agricultural produce from the land he once claimed in the riverine village. The eviction stripped them of the little they had. 

“First they killed my husband, then they orphaned my children and brought us to the verge of begging,” she said. “We would rather have this jhalim sorkar (cruel government) kill us than leave us this way.”

Mumtaz Begum lived on donations from some local NGOs and neighbours, but much of this has stopped, as neighbours themselves struggled to get by after the eviction. She said her husband’s siblings—Piar Ali, Ainal and Ainuddin— give her roughly Rs 2,000 a month whenever they can. But money has been hard to come by. 

“Food has become a luxury now,” said Mumtaz Begum, who now works as a domestic help to provide for the family.  “There are days when we sleep without food, as his [Moinal Haque’s] brothers barely get work as daily wagers.”

Before the eviction, Mumtaz Begum recalled, as a farming family they ate relatively well, including meat, which her three children like. Now,  mornings begin with worries about the next meal, as the family waits for neighbours to share leftovers, she said. 

Rofikul Islam, 34, used to farm five bighas (1.65 acres) of fertile land, but “this eviction has broken our backs and financially crippled us,” he said, adding he was now considering migration to another state for work. 

He said he used to earn Rs 120,000 rupees every year from farming the land or Rs 10,000 per month. The move from skilled farmer to daily wager now gets him less than Rs 5,000 per month. 

“There is nothing left but agony,” said Islam.

Ainuddin and his siblings—Piar Ali, Ainal and the now dead Moinul—had invested Rs 320,000 to grow corn, okra, jute and other food crops on eight bighas (2.64 acres) of land on the sandbar. 

All that ended with the September eviction in 2021, Ainuddin said.

 “Amrar jibon borbad (Our lives are ruined). The little money we had, we invested it all in farming,” he said. “In the end, sob khatam (everything is gone). Brother, home, food and life. We were poor before, but now we  are inching towards a slow famine.”

Police Refuse To Discuss Investigation

Haque’s family has not forgotten the sight of the photographer, Baniya, stomping on his body.

“We can never forget and forgive that man,” Maymana  Begum, Haque’s mother, said, her eyes welling up.

“He will never be at peace. He has the curse of a mother.”

For Ainuddin, that image was an indelible scar.

“I will take that image to my grave,” Ainuddin told this reporter in early September. “I will never forget it.”

Many viewed Baniya’s outpouring of rage on Haque’s dead body as symbolic of right-wing Assamese Nationalism in the state’s long-standing history of agitation against so-called “illegal immigrants”—a term more recently synonymous with Bengali-speaking Muslims—from neighbouring Bangladesh.  

“That was a collective expression of violence borne out of nationalism,” said Suraj Gogoi, who teaches sociology at R V University, Bangalore.

“It was a personification of violence, also symbolic in nature to convey that there will be many more Bijay Baniyas—a Khilonjiya (indigenous) Assamese—should there be any resistance to their so-called claims.”

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) arrested Baniya after he stomped on Haque’s body. Bhaskar Jyoti Mahnta, then Assam director general of police, said on X, formerly known as Twitter, that his death would be investigated.

Mumtaz, Moinul Haque’s wife, said she wanted to see Baniya once. She wanted to look into his eyes once, she added, and ask, “What made you stomp on my husband’s dead body?”

“Does it not haunt him?” she said.  

The police have said little about Baniya’s fate after his arrest. A CID official told this reporter, on condition of anonymity, that a chargesheet had been filed against Baniya, but he did not mention the charges against him. 

Inspector Prafulla Saikia, the investigating officer in Baniya’s case, claimed he was unsure if Baniya was still in judicial custody. He refused to discuss the investigation. 

Another source familiar with the case, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Baniya was released on bail in 2022. Article 14 could not independently verify this claim. 

Inquiry Commission & ‘40 Memoranda’ 

After the police and protesting farmers clashed on 23 September 2021, the state government announced a one-man inquiry commission, headed by former Gauhati High Court judge B D Agarwala. 

Since then 40 memoranda by families, all displaced and some injured from the police firing, were filed before Agarwala’s commission, according to victims. 

Although the commission is viewed by victims as their last hope for justice, they also said it was moving too slowly. 

“Since the inquiry began,” Ainuddin recalled, “we (he and elder brother Amir) were summoned multiple times to the district circuit house and Guwahati… each time, the judge would ask us the same questions, but when is this going to end?” 

Justice Agarwala told Article 14 that the inquiry was in its final stages. “Almost all the government officials have been cross-examined,” he said.

When we spoke to him on 1 November 2023, Justice Agarwala said he was going to summon some of the police constables who allegedly opened fire at the crowd during the 2021 eviction. He intended to “cross-examine them on how many rounds of bullets they fired and to confirm if their version (referring to the rounds of bullets they fired and guns they used) match the government’s version”.

Justice Agarwala questioned nine constables on 4 November, but they struggled to answer, according to Gauhati High Court Advocate A K Sikdar, who was present at the hearing.   

“The constables were all making up with all sorts of lies,” said Sikdar who also represents Hiren Gohain, a prominent Assamese intellectual and a vocal critic of Sarma’s BJP government and 10 other civil society members who filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in November 2021 on behalf of the Dhalpur eviction victims and those evicted. 

“They were misleading the court, coming up with alibis, [saying] that they were somewhere else, at a distance,” said Sikdar. “Some said they fired blanks, and some said they fired below the knees, when it was quite evident that the two victims had bullet injuries above the knees.”

Asked if, in his view, the inquiry commission was impartial, Sikdar said, “Justice Agarwala is doing it fairly.” 

“During the cross-examinations of the Darrang SP and other officials, when I pointed out that they violated the police manual by firing at people above the waist to take stock of the untoward situation, he (Justice Agarwala) too grilled the officials on this.”

“These were cold-blooded murders,” said Sikdar.

The state police denied the allegations. Additional superintendent of police of Olindita Gogoi, who was present during the eviction drive, said in a general FIR that “police resorted to firing for the sake of self-defence aiming below the knee”. 

Justice Agarwala said he would file his final report between April and May 2024, “Before that, we have to cross-examine the photographer (Bijay Shanker Baniya),” he said.

‘Has The Earth Swallowed The Post-Mortem Report?’

For seven months after Haque’s death, Ainuddin made many trips from one department to another for the postmortem report. Amir Hussain, Farid's eldest brother, had the same thing to say. 

“The staff at Mangaldai Hospital, which conducted Farid and Haque's autopsy, told us the police took the report, but we do not know who,” Hussain said. 

The staff at the Mangaldai Civil Hospital, he said, kept turning him away, saying, as a condition for handing over the postmortem report, he needed to bring a “police report” from the Sipajhar police station to certify it was Haque’s body that was brought to the hospital “because our father’s name is spelt wrong in my brother’s [Moinul Haque] death certificate”.

We sought comment from Utpal Baruah, the deputy superintendent of Mangaldai Civil Hospital. He told us to call later, which we did, but he did not respond to calls and texts. 

Ainuddin was irked about the inability to get his brother’s postmortem report. “Has the earth swallowed the post-mortem report?” he said, with a grimace. “For far too long we have been kept in the dark. A bullet killed my brother, the report proves it.”

Ainuddin alleged that the Sipajhar police kept telling him they did not have the report. “The police asked us what we wanted to do with the report —kes koribi neki? (Are you going to file a case against the police?),” Ainuddin told the website Scroll in January 2022, repeating the same thing to Article 14. 

“Tell them to visit the SP office for the post-mortem report,” SP Sonowal, quoted previously, told this reporter. 

Sonowal’s assurance did little to inspire confidence in the two brothers.  “It will be the same cycle again, going from one place to another only to return empty-handed,” Hussain said. 

A member of Citizens for Justice and Peace, a human rights advocacy, Joynal Abedin, who accompanied Ainuddin and Hussain in their quest for the post-mortem reports, said, “In Mangaldai, if you go to the police or district administration asking about Moinul Haque and the Dhalpur eviction, you will not hear anything. Everyone keeps quiet.”

Justice Agarwala told Article 14 that he had Farid and Haque’s postmortem reports, but he said he would not share them with us. Sikdar, Gohain’s counsel in the PIL, said Justice Agarwala had not shown him the reports either.  

False Rehabilitation Claims

Following protests from civil society groups, the opposition, and minority rights organisations demanding the rehabilitation of the evictees,  the district administration, police officials, and representatives of the All Assam Minority Students’ Union (AAMSU) met in January 2022 year in the presence of  Majibur Rahman, a legislator of the neighbouring Dalgaon constituency from the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), a party mainly representing Bengali Muslims. 

According to the minutes of the meeting, 2,051 families had encroached on alleged government land in Dhalpur 1 and 3, including those on the periphery of the Garukhuti project site who were ousted later. 

The meeting asked that each evicted of the evicted families was to be allocated 1 bigha (27,000 sq ft or 0.33 acres) of land in the chaporis (Floodplains) of Dalgaon, according to Rahman. “But nothing was given in writing when I was at the meeting,” he said. 

A resolution in the minutes reads: “All 2,051 families will be shifted to 2051 bighas (678.01 acres) of land under Dalgaon Revenue Circle which is 1 bigha per family.”

When we visited Dhalpur, we found some of the families who voluntarily left their homes and land for the Garukhuti project site had been given land, without title deeds though. But more than 1,000 tin shanties housed those who protested the evictions. The government has given them no land or compensation. 

Mahbubul Alam, Darrang AAMSU president, who was present in the meeting, said although land had been allotted to some “those who were evicted on 20 September and 23 September—those who protested the eviction—were not given any land”.

Activists and rights groups familiar with the Dhalpur eviction agreed.  

“Last year's meeting did not bring about any result,” said farmer Shahjahan Ali, 23, who was one of those evicted on 23 September. “We didn't receive anything, let alone land.” 

“They have left us in the lurch,” said Ali.

In January 2023, the Gauhati High Court, while ruling on Assam Congress leader Debabrata Saikia’s 2021 petition seeking rehabilitation for the Dhalpur evictees, noted the government’s submission that  600 families had been given “alternative plots of land” out of 700 affected, a claim disputed by locals. 

This figure submitted to the court by the state government did not mention those who were evicted violently on September 20 and 23 and does not agree with reality, activists and locals told Article 14. 

We found about 1,300 families evicted on September 20 and 23 of 2021 still living in Dhalpur char.  Those who were rehabilitated and given land— from the 700 that the government—were those who voluntarily left from “encroached land” within the Garukhuti area between January and February 2022 “on the promise of land allotment,” said Ali.

The High Court closed Saikia’s petition and ordered the state government to resettle the remaining 100 families within the next six months. 

Almost a year later, there was no sign that the state government has implemented this order. 

“The government blatantly lied before the court about the rehabilitation,” said AAMSU’s Alam. “They never rehabilitated those 1,300 families who protested the eviction.”

When we sought comment from Sameer Chaudhry, Dalgaon circle officer, who is responsible for the rehabilitation, he said he was in a hospital and could not talk as he was “on leave”. 

In September 2023, Chaudhry told the magazine Frontline that 859 families were rehabilitated—a count higher than the state government’s statement to the high court—of which 168 families were given a bigha land and the rest half a bigha. 

“The rehabilitation process has been completed,” Darramg deputy commissioner Munindra Nath Ngatey told Article 14 before disconnecting the call. 

However, Frontline quoted Ngatey as saying that more than 1,000 families had been rehabilitated. Ngatey’s figure too does not match the government’s claim in the Gauhati High Court of rehabilitating 600 families as of January 2023. 

“The claims surrounding the rehabilitation are false,” said Saddam Hussain, a community activist. “These mismatching claims coming from the state government and the district administration are enough evidence that the Sarma’s government has forgotten these people.”

Some of those supposedly rehabilitated in Arimari and Shyampur areas in Dalagon, such as Mozammil Haque, said they were given land and a slip of paper as proof of land allotment. 

“No proper documents were given,” said Mozammil Haque, a local reporter evicted from the Garukhuti project area months after the Dhalpur eviction. Even though, he said, the government claimed to resettle 600 families here in the Arimari and Shyampur areas, many were landless. 

Marginalised communities in Assam, Bengali Muslims, tribals and Adivasis, face an institutional bias, especially from the current BJP government but also from previous governments around resettlement or rehabilitation, alleged Pranab Doley, an Assam land rights activist. 

“In most cases, these communities have very little access to government institutions to resettle their rights,” Doley said. “For these communities, even the official language is also foreign to them.”

Living With The Fear Of Erosion

Back in Dhalpur, Shahjahan Alii, Mumtaz Begum, and scores of others Article 14 spoke to and who now live on 1000 bighas of government land laced by streams, said they felt abandoned by the government, as the land was vulnerable to erosion. 

“Half of the char is eaten away by the Brahmaputra, and the other half by [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi,” said a villager from Dhalpur 3, while giving us a ride on his motorcycle.

For Asir Uddin, 55, who now lives in Dhalpur 3, the eviction was the second time he had been made homeless: the first time was in the early 1970s when he lost his parental home to river erosion in Assam’s Barpeta, 100 km west of Dhalpur and one of the districts worst hit by erosion. 

“Look at the erosion here,” he said, pointing, “Every day someone’s house in the char is caving in.”

The three riverine villages—Dhalpur 1, Dhalpur 2, and Dhalpur 3—cover about 21, 722 bighas (2,905 hectares) of land, but according to the state's revenue and disaster management minister, Jogen Mohan, Dhalpur and the adjacent Furuhatuli char have lost 3,700 bighas (over 495 hectares) to erosion.

Hazarika, Assam's water resources minister, told the legislative assembly in 2021 that the state had lost 470,000 hectares, 7.4% of its total area, due to erosion since 1950, when an earthquake changed the course of rivers. 

In 2015, the then Congress government recognised river erosion as a natural calamity. But only those with a myadi patta—a land title that proves permanent ownership of land—could apply for compensation. 

People this reporter spoke to in Dhalpur could not prove their ancestors lived in low-lying khas or wasteland along the Brahmaputra river in western and southern Assam.

Over 2.4 million people, mostly Muslims of Bengali ancestry,  of Assam’s 31 million people, live in riverine areas, first brought over by the British colonial government to farm the land.

Most, like Asir Uddin and scores of others, have paid land taxes for decades but do not own the land.

“Because we are miya—a pejorative in Assam for Bengali Muslims—they (the state government) will evict us from our houses, put us through the NRC (National Register of Citizens, a controversial process to prove citizenship), and treat us like outcasts,” said Asir Uddin. 

“Allah’e bisar kharbo ai jalim sorkarer (God will bring this tyrant government to justice).” 

The Gujarat Cows & The Failure Of The Farm Project

Publicised as a “dream Project”, the Rs 9.6 crore plan to use the fertile land vacated “occupied by illegal infiltrators” in Dhalpur would be used to encourage indigenous Assamese youth to return to the land, chief minister Sarma said in December 2021.

Two years since its inauguration, the project's feasibility is in doubt, and it is criticised by opposition parties. 

In March 2023, Assam’s agriculture minister Atul Bora told the legislature that the government had earned Rs 1.51 crore from an investment of over 16 crore over two years. 

Opposition leaders, such as MLA Abdur Rahim Ahmed from the Congress party, doubted the project’s viability. 

He said, “Even the Gir cows they ferried in from Gujarat's Bhavnagar are not yielding any result.” 

Apart from poultry, vegetables, and pigs, the agricultural project has 112 Gir cows bought for Rs 820,000, Bora told the assembly, replying to Ahmed’s questions about the project.  

In another reply that same month to AIUDF MLA Aminul Islam, Bora said that out of 122 Gir Cows, only 47 cows could be milked, the yield from each of them 0.5 lt to 1.5 lt. 

“You bought cows worth lakhs, but if the milk yield from these cows is so little, then how can you claim that the project is a success?” asked Islam. 

The government told Dilip Nath, a right-to-information activist, that each cow, on average, produced 0.5 lt of milk, when they were meant to produce 12-16 lt of milk. 

“The government just wanted to please Modi,” Nath told Article 14.

“What else was the motive of buying cows from Gujarat?”

Padma Hazarika, BJP legislator from Sootea, who chairs the agri project, dismissed Nath’s findings at a press conference on 24 September 2023. 

“Nath is trying to defame it (the project),” said Padma Hazarika.  “He is obfuscating the data. Bulls and pregnant cows do not give milk.”

Nath alleged Padma Hazarika was lying.  “The data came from his office,” Nath said. “How can he claim that I was lying?”

On 22 November, Minister Bora told reporters that around 40 Gir cows from the Garukhuti project had died of illness, adding that “the cows probably could not assimilate with Assam’s climate”. He admitted the farm project had been “unsatisfactory”.

“The project is a failure. There is no question about it,” Ahmed, the Congress legislator, said. “The government pumped crores into it, but no good came out of it.” 

“If they had not evicted these Muslim peasants who are much more experienced in cultivation in char areas, then maybe the project wouldn’t have failed.”

‘It Was A Communal Agenda’

A gathering of almost 50 people in Dhalpur alleged to this reporter in September 2023 that the Garukhuti farm project and the evictions were driven by religious bias against Muslims.

“It (the Garukhuti project) was used as a pretext to evict Muslims,” said Sirajul Haque, a farmer, who with 245 others, first filed a writ petition in Gauhati High Court a month before the 20 and 23 September eviction drives in 2021 seeking compensation and land.

The petition was in response to eviction notices sent to the villagers of Dhalpur 1 and 3 in 2018. 

“They could have chosen any other place for the project but they strategically chose Dhalpur to evict us,” he said.

Assam’s revenue and disaster management minister, Jogen Mohan, told the assembly in 2021 that about 4,000 families had encroached on government land in the riverine villages under Sipajhar block. 

Others argued that the seed of the eviction’s communal motive could be traced to 2016, when demands were first raised to free what was supposed to be a prehistoric Shiva temple in Dhalpur from “illegal encroachers”.

After he was sworn in as chief minister, Sarma visited Dhalpur in June 2021 “to inspect the riverine areas encroached by illegal settlers near Dhalpur Shiva temple”. 

Announcing that 120 bighas of “temple land” had been freed from encroachers Sarma, said, “Such squatters will be evicted from all parts of Assam to protect our land and Assamese identity from encroachers and intruders.”

“It was then we knew that they were planning something fishy,” said Sirajul Haque. “The CM’s visit to the temple and claiming the temple’s land was encroached on by us made things clear.”  

In the squalid settlement in Dhalpur, Anwara Begum, 35, said her family lost their home overnight. “They even flattened our mosques,” she said, “But their temple remains intact.”

Both opposition leaders—Ahmed and Amin —agreed with Anwara and others. 

“There can be no other motive. It was communal,” said Ahmed.

While replying to Ahmed’s question in March, Padma Hazarika, the BJP legislator, denied these allegations, telling the assembly that “a section views everything communally”.    

“A section of people belonging to the Islamic faith encroached upon land at Gorukhuti, and hence the government evicted them,” he said. 

Since Sarma’s government came to power, the state has witnessed a spate of large-scale evictions. Over 4,400 families have been evicted, a majority of them Bengali Muslims, from alleged government land from various districts, Sarma told the legislature in September 2022. 

Political observers and critics of the BJP government in Assam alleged evictions in Assam were a new political tool to target Bengali Muslims  (here and here). Sarma denies these claims. 

“It has become a routine public policy to economically cripple them and morally destroy them as citizens, in addition to profiling them as dangerous to the economy and society,” said Gogoi.

“Its intention is to create a permanent realisation among them that their ‘home’ is neither safe nor permanent.”

Asked if the Dhalpur eviction was communally motivated, Dhalpur district collector Ngatey hung up. On 23 November we emailed a set of questions to Ngatey’s office. There was no reply.

Back in Dhalpur, those evicted expressed bleak hopes for the future.

“Children here are becoming men way before their age and migrating to bidesh (outside Assam) to feed their families,” said Taij Uddin.

“Soon there will be no children, only labourers.”

(Arshad Ahmed is an independent journalist based in Assam, writing on human rights, politics and marginalised communities.)

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