Panic over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act led around 1,000 villagers, mostly women, to ransack and partially set on fire the house of an NGO worker in Birbhum’s Mallarpur on Wednesday.
Sources said Hasnebanu Biwi, a resident of Gourbazar village in Birbhum’s Mallarpur, worked with an NGO. A few months ago, Biwi had collected documents and data from women to educate them on smartphones and Internet as part of a project named Internet Sathi. She had also taken photographs of the women for the project.
As the fear over the National Register of Citizens (NRC) built up in recent times, they went to her house and asked Biwi repeatedly why she had collected the documents. When Biwi apparently failed to give a proper answer, the villagers suspected that the data had been collected for the NRC. The angry villagers then gheraoed her house on Tuesday night before ransacking it on Wednesday morning.
“The villagers suspected the woman had collected documents for the NRC and they gheraoed her house late on Tuesday evening. The irate villagers hurled brickbats and drove away police who came to rescue the family. The family was rescued by the police late in the night. On Wednesday morning, the house was ransacked and a part of it set on fire,” said Mohan Sheikh, a local Trinamul panchayat member.
The villagers also blocked a road for two hours demanding the woman’s arrest.
A police officer said the woman was working for an NGO that had no connection with the NRC and she was linked to the Internet Sathi project.
“She had collected documents for the NGO but the panic over the CAA and the NRC made the villagers turn violent. We tried to reason with them but it did not work. So, we had to take away the woman and her family members to safe custody,” a senior police officer said.
Earlier, another woman involved with the same NGO had been heckled at Nalhati and the local block development officer was gheraoed on January 13.
“The NGO had operated in the district’s four blocks. All the block officials have been asked to campaign in the area no data was being collected for any purpose. We have also alerted the local representatives of different panchayats,” said, Moumita Godara Basu, the district magistrate.
“We are working for Internet Sathi, which is a joint project of Google and the Tata Trust. We have no connection with the NRC. Nonetheless, the villagers attacked our house,” said Azimuz Zaman, district coordinator of the NGO.