By Nava Thakuria
PPFA lambasts villagers’ diktat on woman, urges NCW to take action
Guwahati: The diktat of a group of villagers to send a native woman along with a teen out of the locality for illicit relationship with some people, has created a furore here. Patriotic People’s Front Assam (PPFA), a group of local intelligentsia, while expressing utter dismay over the incident, urged the concerned authority including the National Commission for Women (NCW) to take necessary action against those village-judges to pronounce and implement the decision.
The forum of nationalist citizens in northeast India also dared the village-headman, who was reportedly instrumental in realizing that particular decision, to reveal names of all those ‘holy men’ (probably most of them belong to the village itself) who frequently visited the ‘loose character’ village woman taking advantage of her husband’s absence.
Local media reports narrate a shocking story that a middle-aged woman from Dighala Chapori village under Lakhimpur district in eastern Assam was banished for 12 years as she was ‘found’ having illicit relationship with a number of people. It was decided in a recent meeting (seemingly the kangaroo court) presided over by the village-headman to chase away the woman with her teenage son.
“The decision to send a woman (whose husband is out of Assam for employment) with her son out of the village is not only illegal but also cruel in nature. It might push the boy into a world of insecurity and crime. Nonetheless, a village itself or its headman does not enjoy the authority to issue such a diktat in our country,” said a PPFA statement adding that the State police department should immediately take the initiative to book the culprits under the law.
