Suman Bhattacharyya
On September 20, 2020, a fourteen-year-old Hindu girl, Neela Ray, was stabbed to death. She had apparently turned down the romantic proposals of Mizanur Rahman, a neighbourhood Muslim youth
On this side of the border, in West Bengal, recent investigations have exposed deep connections the agitators against the Citizenship Amendment Act have with the terrorist organisation, Al-Qaeda. On the other side of the border, in Bangladesh, atrocities against the minority Hindu citizens continue unabated.
In the latest incident of such atrocities, on September 20, 2020, a fourteen-year-old Hindu girl, Neela Ray, was stabbed to death. She had apparently turned down the romantic proposals of Mizanur Rahman, a neighbourhood Muslim youth. The incident occurred in Savar, 35 km north-west of the country’s capital, Dhaka. On September 20 evening, around 7.30 pm, Neela and her brother, Alok Ray, were travelling in a rickshaw to a nearby hospital. Neela was dragged out of the rickshaw and taken to a desolate by-lane where the miscreant repeatedly stabbed her.
She was immediately rushed to the hospital and was declared dead.
Several Hindu organisations and civil rights groups in Bangladesh have protested against this ghastly killing and demanded immediate action on behalf of the administration. Mizanur is absconding. All leading newspapers in Bangladesh have covered this gruesome incident and carried reports on how minorities in Bangladesh continue to be intimidated.
Neela stayed with her parents and her brother in Savar. Incidentally, Savar hosts the National Martyrs’ Memorial (Jatiyo Smriti Soudho), built in the memory of the martyrs who sacrificed their lives for the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971. The Memorial was intended to uphold the very ideas of secularism and protection of minority rights in Bangladesh. But, ironically, the fourteen-year-old girl succumbed to her injuries in this historic township of Savar.
Neela’s family members alleged Mizanur had been harassing and stalking Neela for the past two years. Adequately intimidated, her parents had shifted Neela away to their ancestral place in Manikganj, to live with her grandparents. It was on this dreadful day that Neela had come to pay a brief visit to her parents in savar. After meeting her parents, Neela and her brother, were going to the hospital in the evening when this incident occurred.
The unfortunate death of Neela Ray only portrays the plight of Hindus in Bangladesh. It also underlines the sagacity with which our Central Government, under the leadership of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji, introduced the Citizenship Amendment Act to provide shelter, solace and respectable citizenship to the persecuted Hindus from neighbouring countries.
The recent incident is only an eye-opener to the insecurity, harassment and discrimination Hindus continue to face in Bangladesh.
