Panisagar, North Tripura — Bapuji Mia, 56, a driver, was sitting outside his house in Chamtila Panisagar district of Tripura, an Indian state bordering Bangladesh, when a mob of members from the right-wing Hindu group the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) attacked him and other people in the village, on Tuesday.
Mia says he along with his sister and other family members ran towards the river that flows close by. “We saw hundreds of people coming towards us and wanting to attack us. They had stones in their hands,” he told TRT World.
This happened simultaneously across several districts of the remote northeastern state where Muslims live as a minority, after more than 3,000 Hindu activists held a protest Tuesday night that quickly erupted into violence.
The attacks took place as a retaliatory action after Hindus in Bangladesh were attacked by a Muslim mob earlier this month. Seven people were killed and properties, including temples and houses belonging to Hindus, were damaged in the town of Cumilla after rumors spread on social media of a Quran being desecrated at the annual Hindu festival Durga Puja.
The villagers in Panisagar say that Hindus now want “revenge,” in a state where Muslims make up less than 9 percent of Tripura’s 4.2 million population.
“They threw stones at my house too. They will come after us again,” Mia says.When Mia came back to his house after hiding for several hours, the police were already in the area but “did not do anything”.
In several other parts of the restive state, about a dozen mosques were vandalised and shops owned by Muslims were burnt and damaged, Muslim activists and locals have told the media.
The villagers in the area say that they have never witnessed this level of communal hostility. “This never happened before. We lived like brothers and grew up together. There are all Hindus living around us, and we (Muslims) are only three families here,” Mia says.
With their lives being threatened, the family says they have remained indoors since.
After incidents of similar attacks and harassment were reported by local media, police have ramped up security and imposed restrictions on gatherings of more than four people in the most tense parts of the state.
Tripura, encircled by Muslim-majority Bangladesh on three sides, has been ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since 2018. The right-wing government assumed power in the state following two decades of Communist governance by the Left Front.
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