Local court strikes down arrest warrant against Bru leader in criminal defamation case

Senior Civil Judge Lalramsanga struck down the warrant following Sawibunga’s promise that he would attend court hearings regularly.

Sawibunga said he was scared of attending court hearings at Mamit, where the local unit of the Young Mizo Association had filed a defamation case against him for his alleged comments to a national newspaper.

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The newspaper had quoted him early last year saying that Mizos had burned down more than a dozen Bru tribals’ houses while tension prevailed in the state’s western regions because militants, among them some Bru tribesmen, had kidnapped several people for ransom.

There had been no such house-burning incidents however and the YMA took Sawibunga to court over his purported comments.

He never turned up for the scheduled hearings, however, and the court issued an arrest warrant against him.

A Sawibunga, president of the Mizoram Bru Displaced People’s Forum, the main body looking after tens of thousands of Bru tribals lodged in sox relief camps across two subdivisions in northern Tripura, has moved to the Gauhati High Court asking that his case be transferred outside Mizoram.

The court however dismissed his plea and transferred the case instead to the Aizawl District Court.