An EastMojo investigation by Kimi Colney examines what has changed — and what hasn’t — since the 2014 killing of Nido Tania, which led to the creation of the Bezbaruah Committee to address racial discrimination against people from Northeast India.
The story uses the December 2025 death of 24-year-old Anjel Chakma, who was attacked in Dehradun after allegedly being subjected to racial slurs, as a lens to assess the committee’s recommendations. Those recommendations included legal reforms, dedicated police units, helplines, police sensitisation and greater representation of Northeast India’s history and culture in education.
More than a decade on, former committee members tell EastMojo that implementation has been partial and largely limited to Delhi. There is still no dedicated anti-racial discrimination law, while mechanisms such as the 1093 helpline and special police units have not been rolled out nationally. A subsequent monitoring committee, which was supposed to meet quarterly, has met only around 14 times in nine years.
The investigation asks a bigger question: what happens when governments respond to a crisis with recommendations, but fail to build the systems needed to implement them? Anjel’s case suggests that many of the vulnerabilities identified after Nido Tania’s death remain unresolved — with potentially devastating consequences.
The story was produced by EastMojo with support from Report for the World.
Read the full investigation: From Nido Tania to Anjel Chakma: Did the Bezbaruah Committee fail?