Tripura cops use force as locals demand handover of man held for mother-daughter duo’s deaths

Speaking to indianexpress.com, Assistant Inspector General (Law and Order) Jyotishman Das Chowdhury said that a middle-aged woman and her minor girl went missing last month and that their bodies were recovered floating on the waters of the Dumboor lake nine days later.

The Raishyabari police arrested Bijoy Jamatia from Ampi village in the early hours of Tuesday. However, he was transferred to the Birganj police station considering that local residents were angry over the deaths.

“We got him transferred to Birganj police station but soon after, an aggressive mob gheraoed the police station and demanded that we hand him over to them so that they could try him according to their customary laws. We tried to control the situation, but when they were about to attack the police station, our men had to fire six rounds of tear gas shells and resort to lathicharge,” the police officer said.

While local sources said a few villagers were injured, the police denied any injury on either side. The accused was transferred back to the Raishyabari police station in the evening.

Rupshwari Jamatia and her daughter Asudha Rani Jamatia went missing from her home at Raishyabari on October 22. They were not seen until October 31, when their highly decomposed bodies were found in the Dumboor lake. The cause of deaths was drowning, according to the police.

The lake is an artificial one constructed on the reservoir on the Gomati river for setting up the 9MW Gumti hydroelectric power project, which was commissioned in 1976. It was formed by locking water from the Raima and Sarma rivers, forming a reservoir that came to be called the Dumboor lake and is spread over a 42 sq km area.