Spirit was on benign cause but action wrong: Governor on March 5 incident

Principal Correspondent
Kohima, March 16

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]agaland Governor, P. B. Acharya today said that the spirit of the March 5 Dimapur incident was on the benign cause but taking law into own hands is not acceptable. The manner in which the movement has been taken shape, and the things that have been happened, even though the spirit might have been right, but things have gone wrong and it has given a signal that Nagaland is against the Muslims or the tribal people are against non-tribals, the Governor said while addressing a press conference this evening at Raj Bhavan here.
All these issues are non-issues and it should not have any space and restricted that a criminal does not have any religion… if he is a criminal law should be allowed to take its own course, he said.
“Whatever happened in Dimapur was led by the college students and enlightened people. Reasons may be very good but what has happened has given a bad name for the state and we are not that,” he said.
“Survival Nagaland is a wonderful idea or students’ organisation like NSF, we must unite for the greater interest… but the energy should be used for building a golden Nagaland,” he added.
“There is no question of religion in this, and if anybody fears there is Bangladeshi influx and they are over taking our population it is a genuine concern and if the concern is not there the spirit of nationalism will die,” the Governor said. He further stated that the problem of influx of Bangladeshi is not for Nagaland only but Assam is in greater danger amongst the eight states, he said adding that influx of Bangladeshi or foreigner is a very crucial for the north eastern states and it has even reached Mumbai as thousands of them have come.
Expressing that he completely agrees that influx of Bangladeshis has to be tackled, the Governor while pointing to the March 5 incident however said “taking law into own hands and the way we have treated the whole issue is not acceptable”.
“There is a failure on the part of the government, which has been agreed by the Chief Minister and he has expressed that proper steps will be taken and I have also cautioned all the agencies how to work on it,” the Governor said.
Nonetheless, he said that the process of investigation has been bringing out many things and “now it even seems that there was no rape but it was consensual sex”.
On the statement of the government that the state is ill-equipped, he said the government has all the facts and figures so it must be right. Nonetheless, he said that it cannot be an excuse for us, we have failed somewhere. Either our intelligence department has failed as this kind of things cannot happen suddenly… one day earlier there was a procession and all the things showed that somewhere the government has failed”.
The Governor also said that the Chief Minister and the Home Minister have come out strongly and a committee has been constituted and all agencies are working to make analysis to stop recurrence of such things in the future. He therefore appealed all to give cooperation to come to right conclusion.