In spite of a long build-up and clear warnings of potential violence, the Dimapur administration was unable to prevent a total breakdown of law and order in the town as an alleged rapist was brutally lynched by a thousand-strong mob on Thursday.

The mob stormed the town’s Central Jail, dragged out the accused and proceeded to take him to the Clock Tower junction for a public hanging, subjecting him to severe physical assaults on the way, leading to his death. The limp body of the man was still, however, dragged behind a motorcycle to the assigned spot and strung up on a fence.

News of the rape and the arrest of the accused first broke on Tuesday and was reported by Dimapur’s Morung Express News on its front page:
The Dimapur police, without disclosing why the incident was kept under wraps for over a week, said that the victim was a Naga girl in her mid-twenties. The accused is a 35 year old Dimapur-based businessman, identified as Syed Farid Khan.

Passions regarding the incident flared up as soon as news of the alleged rape became known. In the same report, the Morung Express News wrote:
The organisations [Naga Council Dimapur and the Naga Women Hoho] claimed that “unless all Nagas take responsibility to tackle the menace of unabated Bangladeshi infiltrators influx and their stay here in the state, crimes against our women and daughters by these people will only increase.

The NCD and the NWH further urged that “it is time Naga landlords stop renting their vacant plots and buildings to Bangladeshi infiltrators and their cohorts; time that village and colony councils ensure that no Bangladeshi infiltrators are sheltered in their jurisdictions; and time for the district administration and police at the gates to ensure that issuance of inner line permits and its monitoring is strictly checked and adhered to.”

The day after

Matters became worse on Wednesday as protesters marched to the Deputy Commissioner’s office demanding that the accused be handed over to them, as the Morung Express News reported:
 A 9-member representative team of the protesting students, accompanied by members of Survival Nagaland (SN), Naga Students’ Federation (NSF), Naga Women Hoho Dimapur (NWHD) and others, held a meeting inside the DC’s conference hall, with the district administration and police officials.

However, the meeting failed to reach any compromise, with the students sticking to their demand. The DC and SP assured that all possible steps would be taken to punish the accused as per the law. However, they explained their inability to hand over the accused to the protestors, owing to certain provisions of the law.

The Hindustan Times too noted the large number of protesters:
Thousands of protesters had surrounded the offices of the deputy commissioner and superintendent of police on Wednesday, demanding that the alleged rapist named Syed Farid Khan, 35, be handed over to them.

Not the first time

The protests continued through the day, as the Telegraph reported:
Yesterday, other protesters, including students from the college where the victim studies, damaged several shops owned by migrants despite heavy security. Some shops at New Market were set on fire late last evening. Shops at Hazi Park and Hong Kong Market areas were also damaged.

The district administration clamped Section 144 in the evening to control the situation. It was relaxed this morning when another rally was organised, after which the protesters headed for the central jail at 4th Mile, overpowered the security guards at the main entrance and broke open the gates in an attempt to find Khan.

The police fired blank rounds and tear gas shells and lathicharged the protesters, but could not control the crowd. Later, the jail authorities allowed the protesters to inspect the cells to identify the accused who had been shifted there from the East Dimapur police station sub-jail.

The administration could have done more, noted The Nagaland Post:
In any such situation, top civil and police officers even including the minister would have shown up by Thursday itself. District administration officials had on Thursday, informed that the services of the Assam Rifles and security forces were also requisitioned to control the situation but even till Thursday night, there was no sign of them at all. The district administration had clamped Section 144 Cr PC on Wednesday night but no enforcement was visible throughout the streets of Dimapur.

This is not the first time that an alleged rapist has been lynched to death in Nagaland.  Last year, an accused was lynched at Meluri town in Phek district, around 280km from Dimapur, for allegedly raping a girl and subsequently strangulating her to death, as the Telegraph reported, which is why the nature of the protests should have forewarned the police.

Much of the violence seems to have been driven by xenophobic hysteria against outsiders – in this case Bengali Muslims, as reported by the The Hindustan Times:
Meanwhile, there were unconfirmed reports of migrant Muslims leaving or trying to leave Dimapur for relative safety in Assam. Engaged mostly as farm labourers or construction workers, the migrants have periodically been targeted during anti-migrant violence in Nagaland.