Doctored MMS provoked Pune attacks on North-Eastern community

Pune: 26-year-old Kahomdal Panmel, a software professional from Manipur, has lived in Pune for three years. He moved to the city to work with IT giant Infosys.  Pune has never felt less like home.

Last week, he was attacked while he was walking home in Kondhwa in east Pune, where many young professionals and students from Assam and Manipur live. "I was walking with my sister when two youth came from behind and started hitting me with rods.  I don't know why...they did not give any reason," he said.  A group of people watched him being hit. They did not intervene.  As the audience got larger, the attackers rode away on their motorcycles.

Then two men arrived and warned him that it was unsafe to be walking around his neighbourhood.  He has moved to another part of the city since.

12 people from different Northeastern states have been attacked in Pune in the last five days.  11 people have been arrested.  Pune, a city known for its IT hub and colleges, has a community of 10,000 North-Easterners.  

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The police believe that a doctored MMS is being circulated to provoke attacks. The clip allegedly plays on the fears and tension of the recent ethnic clashes in Assam, in which close to 80 people have been killed. The same distorted MMS allegedly did the rounds of Mumbai before Saturday's riot in Mumbai, in which two people were killed at a demonstration where the police expected a few thousand people to show up. Instead, the crowd was 40,000-strong. An armed mob has been caught on security cameras, boarding a train while carrying swords and rods as it headed towards Azad Maidan, the venue of the rally. The footage suggests the riot had been planned. The speeches of five of those who addressed the audience are being studied as well.

The government is investigating calls allegedly made by religious and political leaders across the country to instigate violence as a reaction to the ethnic clashes in Assam between indigenous Bodo tribals and Bengali-speaking Muslims.

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In parliament, the opposition demanded that Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde share the latest facts on the Assam crisis as well as the Mumbai riots.  Maharashtra Chief minister Prithviraj Chavan met the Prime Minister.