The killing of Anjel Chakma in Dehradun is not merely a story of one violent night. It is a mirror held up to a society that has long normalised racial prejudice against its own people. What began as verbal abuse reportedly laced with racial slurs ended in fatal violence, exposing uncomfortable truths about how ‘Northeast Indians’ are treated in our cities. Reports tell us that on the night of 9 December, Angel Chakma, a young MBA student from Tripura, was attacked in Selaqui, on the outskirts of Dehradun. According to police records and eyewitness accounts, a confrontation escalated rapidly over racial remarks. Within minutes of the verbal abuse, Angel was reportedly stabbed.
He succumbed to his injuries, while his brother Michael Chakma, who was with him, survived with serious physical, and psychological trauma. Witnesses to the Selaqui incident reportedly heard racial slurs before the assault turned physical. The police have arrested five individuals so far. While the arrests are being projected as swift action, many questions remain unanswered. What makes the killing of Angel Chakma particularly disturbing is how familiar the sequence feels to students from the Northeast. Verbal abuse – being called “chinki,” “Chinese,” or reduced to stereotypes like “momos” and “chowmein” – which even people outside the Northeastern states relish to eat – has long been dismissed as casual banter or ignorance. The effort to dehumanize and belittle someone merely because of their appearance is shocking in this millennium when India is progressively moving towards the 2047 goal of ‘Viksit Bharat’.
The general perception of being an outsider lingers in the society outside Northeast India. While many states in the Northeast are xenophobic, in mainstream society, the situation is different. Young people from the Northeast have migrated to cities like Delhi, Bengaluru, Pune, Maharashtra, Kolkata, and Dehradun in search of education and employment. But, what they often encounter is suspicion, mockery, and vulnerability. From landlords refusing accommodation to employers making racist remarks, discrimination is woven into daily life. Data on hate crimes against Northeasterners remains fragmented, partly because such incidents are underreported and under-recorded.
Also, racial abuse is rarely treated as a serious offence. Moreover, the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) does not maintain a separate category for racial crimes against people from the Northeast, making the scale of the problem easier to deny. One would recall the 2014 death of Nido Tania, a 19-year-old Arunachali student beaten in Delhi for his dyed hair, perceived as ‘Chinki arrogance’ that sparked national outrage, leading to the Bezbaruah Committee. That panel documented 62 attacks in Delhi from 2012-2014, including acid attacks and assaults, recommending a special police unit (SPUNER), implemented in 2015. Other cases like the 2017 lynching of Tabrez Ansari in Jharkhand echoed similar mob fury, but Northeast-specific violence peaked with 2020’s Manipur students thrashed in Kerala for ‘Chinese features.’
In 2023, a Mizoram woman was gang-raped in Haryana, with slurs cited in FIRs. Angel Chakma is unfortunately the latest victim. The key findings of the Bezbaruah Committee included the urgent need for new or amended laws, specifically by inserting new sections into the Indian Penal Code (IPC) (e.g. Section 153C and 509A) to make racial insults and violence a cognizable and non-bailable offense punishable by up to three or five years imprisonment, along with the creation of fast-track courts and a dedicated panel of lawyers and public prosecutors. The committee also stressed the importance of strengthening law enforcement through the creation of Special Police Units for North Eastern people; the appointment of nodal officers; the establishment of a dedicated 24/7 helpline (1093); and the recruitment and sensitization of police personnel from the region and dedicated (Northeast) helplines.
To combat the underlying prejudice, the report advocated for mandatory education about the North East in school curriculums, using media to promote awareness, organizing cultural exchange programs, and utilizing sports events to foster better integration and understanding between the communities. NGOs like NESO (North East Students’ Organization), track 500 plus annual incidents, echoing a similar sentiment for curriculum reforms to teach Northeast history beyond textbooks’ tokenism. Northeastern India’s population traces its Mongoloid origins to ancient migrations from East and Southeast Asia, beginning around 2000 BCE. Anthropological evidence links Tibeto-Burman, Austroasiatic, and Tai groups to proto-Mongoloid waves that settled the Brahmaputra Valley and hills, blending with indigenous Australoid and Negrito populations. British colonial ethnographers like Herbert Risley classified them as “Mongoloid” in the 19th-century Census of India, a term derived from facial features such as epicanthic folds, straight black hair, and lighter skin tones shared with populations in Mongolia, Tibet, and Myanmar.
Post-independence, this ‘othering’ (meaning treating a people or region as fundamentally different, distant, or not fully part of the mainstream) persisted through maps portraying the Northeast as a peripheral ‘frontier,’ ignoring its role in Ahom Kingdom ) resistance against Mughals from the 13th century. This historical framing fuels modern perceptions of Northeasterners as perpetual ‘outsiders,’ despite their contributions to India’s freedom struggle, such as Rani Gaidinliu’s Naga rebellion against British rule or U-Tirot Singh’s contribution from Meghalaya and even the present dispensation recognizing the tangible and intangible heritage of the Northeastern states. The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, serves as the primary recourse since many Northeastern communities qualify as Scheduled Tribes.
Calling someone “Chinki” or similar slurs can trigger penalties under this Act, including up to five years’ imprisonment, as it prohibits insults based on caste or tribe. However, it excludes non-ST Northeasterners, like some Meitei or Bengali groups from Meghalaya, Manipur and Tripura, limiting its scope. The Delhi High Court in 2014, responding to Nido Tania’s case, directed legislation against inter-state harassment and formed a monitoring committee for racial attacks. The Supreme Court in Court on its ‘Own Motion v. Union of India’ (2014) labeled such discrimination ‘a threat to national integrity’, violating Articles 14, 15, 19(1), and 301 of the Constitution, which guarantee equality, non-discrimination, free movement, and trade. Last but not the least, Anjel Chakma’s death has sent waves of grief through the Chakma community.
Anjel was not just a statistic, he was a young man with ambitions, a family’s hope, whose future has been cut short. While law enforcement agencies are probing the incident for action against the perpetrators of this heinous crime, addressing such a situation requires mandatory sensitivity training for police and employers, curriculum intervention and most importantly, Article 15 enforcement against appearance-based bias. Justice delayed, should not be justice denied.
(VIEWS ARE PERSONAL. THE WRITER IS PROGRAMME EXECUTIVE, GANDHI SMRITI AND DARSHAN SAMITI )