The attack on police personnel by members of the Khasi Students Union, North Khasi Hills District is a grave crime. It also shows the breakdown of law and order in Meghalaya . No amount of excuses can justify an attack on uniformed personnel because that person in uniform represents the state and its internal security system. That a students’ body should be taking the law in its hands suggests that this group is ignorant of the rules of engagement in a civilized society. In the first place why should the KSU take up the case of an individual member who had an altercation with a driver of a commercial vehicle? A fight between individuals should be left to the law to deal with. No group can bully a police personnel, much less manhandle a police official inside a police station! This matter is being scrutinized by people across the country as the video clip of the incident has gone viral. It will be interesting to see how the police finally handle the case because this will also decide the behaviour of other pressure groups in future.
This is not the only incident of breakdown of law and order. Recently some masked individuals enter the North Eastern Hill University (NEHU) and assaulted an aspirant for the proposed election to the NEHU Student’s Union. This means that even an election to students’ body is not fee from violence and intimidation. This is worse than a state assembly election. Several questions arise about the security and safety of the NEHU campus. How did the masked persons enter the campus? Who let them in? Have the assaulters who evidently have criminal intent been arrested yet? If not what sort of message is NEHU sending to the world? What are the NEHU authorities doing to secure the environment inside the campus? How safe are the students there? NEHU has always been a hotbed of politics and elections to the NEHUSU has always been influenced by outside forces that seek to ensure that this student body is controlled by a particular ethnicity. This is not what an academic institution should be and there should be no place for such ethno-centric mindsets in an academic institution. Unfortunately, matters don’t seem to have been taken seriously enough by the NEHU authorities. Besides the logic appears to be that this is an internal matter of NEHU and therefore no outside interference should be entertained. But NEHU is a public institution and anything that occurs inside it is a matter of public interest. People have the right to know about the safety and security of their wards inside that institution.