For how long will people tolerate it? That is the first reaction of people after a woman was attacked on the road outside Civil Hospital. This is not sympathy, not policy talk, but raw anger.
A woman, walking to deliver food to her ailing husband, was followed from Anjalee Petrol Pump and attacked in broad daylight near the NCC gate. Her gold earrings were ripped off so violently that her ears bled. The viral video shows her bloodied, shaken, surrounded by a crowd that wants instant justice.
And the accused, police say, is a drug user who needed hospitalisation.
The city has spent years talking about drug users as victims. Victims of unemployment, of broken homes, of easy drug routes from across the border, of a system that failed them. And they are. Any parent who has watched a child slip into addiction will tell you it is not a lifestyle choice; it is a slow drowning.
But what happens when the victim becomes a predator? Take the 2019 case of 53-year-old cabbie Hapish Nongbri, who was murdered by suspected drug users.
Shillong today lives with a dual crisis. On one hand, we have a generation of young men and women trapped in addiction, for whom rehabilitation centres are few, expensive and often ineffective. On the other, we have ordinary citizens — especially women, the elderly and daily-wage earners — who are now unsafe in their own localities.
Laban, Anjalee, Them Mawbah, Polo, Mawprem — the list of vulnerable pockets grows every month. Theft from parked cars, breaking into homes, and now physical assault for a pair of earrings.
The law, as it stands, is caught in between. Police detain, medical examination confirms addiction, Section 35(3) of BNSS is invoked, a notice to appear is issued, and the accused is sent for treatment. Legally sound, humane even. But on the ground, it looks like impunity. People see detention, not arrest. They see a notice, not jail. And they ask — where is justice for the woman who will live with the trauma and the injury?
This is not a call to demonise every addict. To do so would be lazy and cruel. Most addicts do not attack people. Most suffer silently. But to ignore the growing public safety threat in the name of compassion is equally lazy.
Compassion cannot mean lawlessness.
If Meghalaya wants to genuinely help its drug users, it must also genuinely protect its citizens from those drug users who turn violent.
What we urgently need is a functional, state-run, free rehabilitation and detox chain in every district, with police-linked de-addiction custody, not just a notice slip. Fast-track prosecution for drug-induced violent crimes. Addiction can be a mitigating factor for treatment, it cannot be a free pass for assault, snatching and robbery. The law must distinguish between use and violent offence under influence.
Community policing that actually patrols vulnerable stretches of the city, because CCTVs and street lights — most of them non-functional — are not policy statements, they are deterrents.
The woman did not choose to be a victim. She was simply walking to see her sick husband. The man who attacked her may have chosen drugs once, but society chose to leave both of them on the same unsafe road.
For how long will people tolerate it? Not for long, if the government continues to offer sympathy without safety, and treatment without accountability.
Shillong cannot afford to lose its empathy. But it also cannot afford to lose its streets.
