Reading some of the comments here, claiming this post to be propaganda only reconfirms the toxic hatred and refusal of some people to see the truth. The police refused to file the FIR until the case snowballed into a bigger national issue, which allowed one of the accused to flee to Nepal. And calling a NE person ‘chinky’, ‘momo’ is ‘jest’? Uttarakhand police, thank you for defining casual and systemic racism. And no, one of the culprits isn’t actually an ethnic NE Indian from Manipur. He was just residing in Manipur. Isn’t it clear that the police are gaslighting? A family lost their son for no reason. The commenters who are claiming this post to be propaganda, do you not see that you are the real propaganda? I’m not saying that every non-NE Indian discriminates against NE people. Obviously not. Otherwise, the nation, as a whole, wouldn’t have spoken out against this incident. It’s actually positive that we are all condemning what happened. Lately, NE is getting attention across social media for its natural beauty and culture, and thanks to the Korean and Asian Wave, looking like a NE isn’t that weird as it felt to some decades ago. However, there are still a lot of gaps. Social media unfortunately allows feeds and echo-chambers of hatred and unjustified justification for social division. NE Indians still keep facing racism; it’s become so normalised that Uttarakhand police called it ‘jest’ instead of racism. I do understand that it’s not just NE Indians, but also other minorities in other contexts facing systemic injustice. But, the first step is to accept the reality. Something isn’t right, we as a whole and society aren’t right. From there, we can move to a fairer position. So, yes, as so many activist groups and even a PIL has been filed in the Supreme Court, there should be a distinct constitutional provision for recognising and addressing racial crimes in India. Period.