N-E exodus: Thousands flee city

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Thousands of students and families from the North-east quit colleges and jobs in the city overnight, locked their homes and rushed to the City Railway Station in a panicked exodus Wednesday night, fearing violence against them and desperately wanting to go back to their hometowns. The railway station became a seething mass of frightened North-easterners, wary of being left behind at the mercy of mobs that have threatened vengeance against the killings of Muslims by the Bodos in distant Assam.

Top intelligence sources said the unprovoked knife attack on Tenzin Dhargyal, a 20-year-old Tibetan in Mysore on Tuesday evening by two unknown assailants and three attacks that have taken place since July 28, news of which spread through text messages, triggered Wednesday’s exodus.

Top cops, including City Police Commissioner Jyothiprakash Mirji and state DG-IGP Lalrokhuma Pachau sought to assure the community at a late-night press conference that there was no cause for panic as no incidents had been reported in Bengaluru. The police chiefs as well as Chief Minister Jagadish Shettar are learnt to have received calls from the Prime Minister’s office and the Union Home ministry asking them what measures the state government had taken to protect the two-lakh strong community from the country’s North-East.

Many of them feared a threat to their lives. One young man, who did not want to be named, told this newspaper that he and his friends felt threatened and unsafe in their colleges, while those who worked in the service industry felt the same at their workplaces. “We are afraid, and our families have asked us to return home,” he said.

Deputy Chief Minister and Home Minister R. Ashok visited the railway station and pleaded with the frightened people not to leave the city. “Don’t panic. Government will take full responsibility for your lives and property,” he told them, but to no avail as families that could not catch the late night trains prepared to bed down for the night in the station itself, hoping to leave on Thursday.