Tripura was engulfed in grief and anger on Saturday as the body of a young tribal student, who died after being brutally attacked in Uttarakhand's Dehradun district, was brought back to the state.
Anjel Chakma, a final-year MBA student at Jigyasa University in Dehradun, had been fighting for his life for weeks in a hospital after sustaining critical injuries in a violent assault earlier this month.
The incident took place on December 9 between 6 pm and 7 pm in Dehradun's Selaqui area, when Anjel and his younger brother, Michael Chakma, a student of Uttaranchal University, stepped out to buy groceries.
Reports said that a group of unidentified youths, allegedly under the influence of alcohol, targeted the brothers with racial abuse linked to their physical appearance. The attackers allegedly used slurs along with other local insults. When the brothers objected to the derogatory remarks, the situation quickly escalated into violence.
During the attack, Michael was allegedly struck on the head, while Anjel was stabbed in the neck and abdomen. He was rushed to the intensive care unit of a local hospital, where he remained under treatment before dying due to his injuries on Friday.
Anjel's body was flown to Agartala via Delhi on Saturday. Family members, along with leaders of the Youth Tipra Federation (YTF) and the Tribal Indigenous Students' Federation (TISF), received the body at Maharaja Bir Bikram Airport.
The body was later taken to his residence at Nandanagar, where a large number of people gathered to pay their last respects. Subsequently, the body was taken to his native village in Unakoti district for the final rites.
The tragic incident has sparked strong reactions, with the victim's family and several student organisations demanding stringent punishment for those responsible.
They also appealed to the Central Government to take firm steps to address what they described as the persistent problem of racial discrimination against youths from the North-Eastern region in different parts of the country.
