The Camel, the needle of suspicion and the rich man
October 17, 2017: Jesus Christ once famously said, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven”. As the fate would have it, there was a camel, there was a needle of suspicion and then there was a rich man—but the story line changed, completely. The poor camel, who suffered severe physical injuries while being transported, allegedly to Bangladesh illegally, had been waiting for the specialist vet to attend him while the ‘rich-man’ who brought the ‘unusual’ animal to the state surreptitiously was languishing in the police station.
Fact is , entire Dharmanagar in North Tripura District and its adjoining areas were buzzing with the camel story and thousands of people were thronging in – many of them bringing their children too – watch the camel. Last night the locals noticed something unusual was peeping at them from a covered vehicle and they gathered to recover the camel. It was being transported to Baburbazar area by resident of that locality Azizur Rahaman. Rahaman, a rich man , had a long cherished dream of a camel , and bought it for Rs, 50, 000 from a place called Achhimganj, at least so he claimed. But the problem was neither he could show any proper document of the purchase nor the locals were actually convinced about his Bedouin desire for the desert animal here in this hilly state. They strongly suspected the camel was brought here to get it smuggled to Bangladesh. What, however, irked the locals more was the way the camel was brought. Its legs were apparently broken as the driver Amar Nath and Rahaman squeezed this huge animal into the small vehicle. And there were other injury marks also. The locals intercepted the vehicle at around 8 pm night and as the crowd swelled, the demand for Rahaman’s arrest grew with it. At last at around 10 pm SDPO Jytoshman Das began legal proceedings and the camel was brought to the police station along with Nath and Rahaman.
Apparently, the animal suffered serious injuries as it could not move and was groaning in pain. Tears were rolling down constantly- which moved the crowd more into rage.
“ The camel is definitely not a very pretty animal. But when it was silently weeping we had seen many people’s eyes also got swollen with tears”, said a local to the TT.
Till filing the report police was reported to have been trying to contact the Animal Husbandry department for sending a specialist doctor to attend the injured camel. In the meantime, the police station remained still crowded with curious onlookers and children who saw for the first time an animal out of their story book.
(Courtesy: Tripura Times)
