SHILLONG: In yet another case of a traditional village Dorbar’s high handedness and dictat, a village Dorbar in Ri Bhoi district allegedly ostracized a woman along with her family and few villagers when they opposed the move of the village leaders to allegedly take away the agricultural land belonging to the family and convert the same into a village forest.
Addressing a press conference here on Monday, Slodian Kurbah, a farmer by profession and a single mother of seven children from Umtangi village around 20 kilometers from Umsning in Ri Bhoi alleged that she was ostracized after she refused to part away with her agricultural land where she cultivated ‘ginger’ to support her family.
While alleging that the village Dorbar destroyed her agricultural land, she also accused the police of not taking any action against the village leaders though an FIR has already been lodged in this regard.
Kurbah had filed an FIR with the Umsning police outpost against the village authority on June 28, of which action was never taken till the filing of this report.
Later, the village Dorbar at its meeting held on October 5, has decided to also ostracize some of the few villagers who had strongly objected to its move.
“They (village dorbar) had passed a decision prohibiting me and my family from using the village drinking water, road, and other activities because I had dared to expose their illegal decision and filed a complaint against them,” Kurbah told reporters at a news conference on Monday.
While fearing for her life, she asserted that village heads have even threatened them,
A former Umtangi village secretary, Benedict Jarain and four other like-minded villagers out of pity decided to support the woman and have requested the village Dorbar to reconsider its decision and to take the land documents into account.
“We were thrown out of the Dorbar Shnong just because we dared to challenge the decision of the village authority,” Benedict Jarain told reporters.
According to villagers, the Syiem of the area earlier had also passed an order that the Dorbar Shnong cannot in any manner take away the land of Kurbah. “However, till today despite of all these things, the Syiem had not taken cognizance of the matter,” the former village secretary lamented.