The death of Vikash Nandwal on Saturday morning cast a pall of gloom across the city. A quick SMS message that quickly went viral brought hundreds of people together at Khyndailad to mourn the death of this brave young man who fought for his life till the very last until fate decided otherwise. At a time like this it is not expected that anyone would try to draw mileage out of tragedy. But it did. A woman’s organisation quickly took advantage of the situation to draw attention to itself rather than at the human tragedy, by calling a bandh and asking all traders to down their shutters as a mark of protest. This is totally uncalled for and should be condemned in the severest words. Normally when the crowd gathers at a place to pay respects for the departed soul there is a solemnity with which the gathering conducts itself. No one should be playing to the gallery by putting up inflammatory posters with messages such as; “hang the murderers” etc. The law of the land must be allowed to prevail. If at all we want justice then there must be a committee of citizens to pursue the Nandwal case to its logical end and not allow the police to rest until justice is done and a proper charge-sheet built on solid evidence has been built.
The second point is that in a gathering such as the one on Saturday everyone who comes to pay their respects to the departed soul should be allowed free passage and should not have to push and jostle through the crowd that seemed keen to be seen closest to the centre of gravity. This is pathetic to say the least. Everyone has the right to equal access to that space; all should have been able to light their candles and say their moment’s prayer without being pulled and pushed around. But it seems that some people had to make sure they were at the epicentre. It really shows how much we have sunk and how human values are debased by the need for one-up-manship. Even when a similar crowd had gathered to pay their respects for Dana Sangma, niece of chief minister, Dr Mukul Sangma at the same place, last year, there were people who were keener to be seen next to the Chief Minister than to pay their silent respect for the dead. This is a sad denouement to civil behaviour. Now the silent ones must also be the ones who will doggedly pursue the Nandwal case. Those in the limelight would have forgotten the matter a fortnight later.