Three Khasi Students' Union leaders are in 14-day custody after a Shillong rally turned violent
Police say 31 vehicles were damaged and statues of Subhas Chandra Bose and Swami Vivekananda were vandalised. The union says the issues will outlast the arrests.
A black-flag bike rally that the East Khasi Hills administration had permitted for two hours on Wednesday ended in a night of FIRs, and by Thursday morning the three senior-most leaders of the Khasi Students' Union were in judicial custody.
KSU president Raymond Kharjana, vice-president Pynkmenlang Sanmiet and general secretary Reuben Najiar were arrested late Wednesday and produced before the District and Sessions Judge in Shillong on Thursday. The court remanded them for 14 days. Director General of Police Idashisha Nongrang told ThePrint the three were arrested as part of the probe into the violence. East Khasi Hills Superintendent of Police Vivek Syiem said the district police had registered 15 FIRs.
The rally was organised after a 15-day deadline the union had set for Chief Minister Conrad Sangma's government ran out. The five-point agenda includes changes to Meghalaya Public Service Commission recruitment, among them an end to personal interviews for junior non-gazetted posts, and a demand that state jobs be reserved for genuine residents of the state. Police say 31 vehicles were damaged. Public property was vandalised, including statues of Subhas Chandra Bose and Swami Vivekananda. The local executive magistrate's complaint said several bikers had covered their number plates, that government and private vehicles were damaged, and that a member of the public was attacked with sticks and sharp objects in what the complaint called an attempt to murder. When a police team went to make the arrests, protesters allegedly hurled petrol bombs, and another FIR followed.
Deputy Commissioner Abhilash Baranwal said the KSU had undertaken that there would be no masked men and no inflammable materials, and that videos showed those conditions were broken. Former KSU president Lambokstarwell Marngar said people with other motives may have infiltrated the rally, and that the union would keep agitating. "You may arrest the leaders, but you cannot arrest the issues," he said. Assam-registered taxi drivers blocked entry points into Meghalaya on Thursday after vehicles from Assam were among those damaged.
I keep coming back to the permission. The administration signed off on a two-hour flag march, took an undertaking, and still ended the day with 15 FIRs and the union's entire top line in custody. That is a failure of crowd control, or of the union's control over its own rally, and maybe both. The MPSC interview demand is the part that will travel, because it is the same argument students make in other states: a written exam you can prepare for, and a viva you cannot. The statues and the Assam vehicles are the part that will decide whether this stays a recruitment fight or becomes a communal one.
The 14 days in custody are a pause, not a settlement. Watch whether the remaining KSU leadership keeps the sit-in going after the district withdrew permission for one at Khyandai Lad, and whether Sangma's cabinet, which said on Wednesday it was open to talking, actually puts the MPSC points on paper. A dialogue that starts after the president is in jail has a different temperature from one that starts before the rally.