GUWAHATI: The Assam Christian Forum (ACF), an ecumenical body of churches in Assam, has appealed to the community to keep in mind the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) that rocked the state since December 2019 and claimed the life of a teenager in police action.
The leading Christian body said no Christians have come to Assam from Pakistan, Bangladesh or Afghanistan because of religious persecution, and thus the Act has no meaning for the community in the state. The forum reminded them of the death of Sam Stafford, the 17-year-old student, who died in police action when anti-CAA protests had reached its peak. The legislation will only have a negative impact on the social fabric of the state, it stressed.
The happy ending of this story came about due to a mixture of pure chance and the laudable inquisitiveness of a Detective Branch (DB) police constable, Mahfizur Rahman. He stopped by a roadside tea stall on his way to office. While sipping his tea, he overheard others talking about a woman in a nearby slum suddenly having a baby although no one ever saw or heard anything about her being pregnant. It piqued his curiosity, so he asked a few questions and decided to pay a visit to the mother .
Upon arriving there, he found Mousumi Begum, 23, and her husband Md. Sajiv cuddling the two-day-old, as all parents would do. He was told that the sudden birth of the baby was caused by an accident while Mousumi was returning home in a rickshaw. The obvious gaps in the narrative further aroused his suspicions. He reported this to his superiors at the office where he learned that, on the previous day, a newborn baby had gone missing after delivery from Rajshahi Medical College Hospital (RMCH). CC