Being a northeastern in Delhi—casual racism, everyday profiling and violence

**New Delhi:** A woman stood wearily outside Malviya Nagar police station on Sunday afternoon, her face covered with a pink *dupatta*, trying to shield herself from cameras. The stitches behind her ears were still fresh. A day earlier, an evening walk in a nearby park with a transwoman friend turned violent for the 37-year-old lawyer from Manipur when a group of teenage boys racially abused and attacked her with a knife — the latest in a series of incidents that people from the Northeast say reflect how quickly everyday prejudice in the national capital can turn into open hostility.

“We are Indians too, so why are we being discriminated against?” said the victim’s friend, 50-year-old Sangeeta Keisam, who accompanied her. “We are now living in fear.”

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The attack comes at a time when several recent incidents in south Delhi have once again pushed the question of racism against people from the Northeast into the public view. Just three weeks earlier, three women from Arunachal Pradesh accused a neighbour in the same Malviya Nagar area of abusing them with racial slurs; a video of the confrontation that circulated widely on social media showed the woman falsely alleging that they ran a “massage parlour” at home.

For many Northeastern migrants in Delhi — students, professionals and service industry workers — such hostility is rarely sudden. It often builds through everyday remarks about appearance, food, and culture before spilling into open confrontation. From everyday profiling to suspicions from neighbours and landlords — Northeasterners have a tough time navigating the national capital.

What unfolded in the Malviya Nagar park was another moment when those simmering tensions became visible — bringing back echoes of earlier incidents of fatal violence against people from the Northeast, including the 2014 killing of Nido Tania, a 19-year-old from Arunachal Pradesh who was beaten to death in Lajpat Nagar after being mocked for his hairstyle, and the 2025 attack on Anjel Chakma, a 24-year-old student from Tripura who died 17 days after he was assaulted in December in Dehradun.

Lawyer Upasana Goyal, who is assisting the victim in the case, said the incident reflects a deeper social failure.

“Both victims are from Manipur, a region that has already faced severe conflict and instability,” Upasana said. “They came to the capital in search of safety and opportunity. Yet even here, they were not protected.”

# A walk gone awry

Just a few metres from the police station, the three women finally sat at a cafe, sipping tea and catching their breath after nearly 24 hours of back and forth with cops, hospitals and the court.

Not having the strength to speak, the victim asked her friend, Keisam, to narrate the incident.

Around 5:30pm on Saturday, the lawyer and her transwoman friend, 39, had gone to the nearby Satpula Park for what was meant to be a short walk. They planned to take photographs of flowers and spend some time together after work. Instead, they say they were surrounded by a group of boys.

“Five or six boys started teasing them about their appearance using racial slurs,” Keisam recounted. “They were around fifteen or sixteen.”

At first, the remarks came from a distance. Soon, the boys began following them.

“They used extremely vulgar language, including sexual and transphobic slurs,” Keisam said. According to the complainants, the situation turned violent the moment the women confronted the boys.

“When she asked them why they were speaking like that, the boys became even more aggressive,” Keisam said. “Their ego was hurt. How could someone from the Northeast and a transwoman ask them to behave?”

What began as taunts quickly turned violent.

One of the boys suddenly punched the lawyer in the mouth. When her friend tried to intervene, the group turned on both of them.

Then, Keisam said, one of the boys pulled out a knife. Frightened, the two women tried to run. But the boys chased them down.

During the attack, the lawyer suffered a deep cut behind her ear. Another boy allegedly removed his belt, fitted with sharp metal edges, and repeatedly struck her from behind.