The recent murder case of a businessman from Indore, Madhya Pradesh — Raja Raghuvanshi — in Meghalaya has once again exposed how biases and stereotypes work in society. Initially, Raja and his wife Sonam, who were on their honeymoon trip, were reported missing on 23 May 2025 in Sohra. On 2 June, Raja’s body was recovered in a deep gorge near Weisawdong Falls in the East Khasi Hills district of Meghalaya. Sonam was still missing.
The case has made headlines in both traditional and social media. What makes both the media reportage and social media reactions interesting is how stereotypes against the Northeast were at work. Media reports called Meghalaya ‘crime-prone’, ‘unstable’, and ‘a place full of danger’.
These sentiments were echoed by netizens who targeted people from the Northeast as ‘savages’ and ‘junglees’. The immediate assumption was that people from the Northeast were involved in this heinous crime. Interestingly, these are not really new terms but colonial constructs that have continued in post-colonial usages.
In several colonial works on the history of the northeastern region (Edward Gait, T. C. Hodson, Alexander Mackenzie, etc.), it has been referred to as ‘remote’, ‘a land of tribal unruliness’ and ‘a land of jungles’.
Such works rendered the Northeast as ‘difficult to administer’ because of its terrain, geography and climate. Even after 77 years of independence, the colonial tropes continue to be used in nationalist imaginations of the area. Social media users asked each other to avoid ‘unexplored’ and ‘exotic’ places.
They opined that it is better to stick to crowded and familiar places. Some even stated how the Northeast is a land of black magicians who perform spells on outsiders. There was also a demand to hand over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
It reflected a mistrust in the Meghalaya state government and the police. The overtly racist stereotypes and portrayals have no empirical backing but are still widely prevalent. For instance, neither is Meghalaya crime-prone nor is the northeastern area full of black magicians.
However, the continued widespread prevalence of stereotypical notions and biases can be attributed to the complete erasure of the northeastern region from public conscience.
There is little recognition of the region in Indian history and culture. NCERT curriculum, for instance, has little reference to the region’s history and cultural distinctiveness in subjects like history and social sciences.
To cite another example, the idea of ‘Indian’ food is restricted to cuisines from specific regions (north, south, etc.) but rarely includes food from Northeast India. Cuisines of the region are categorized as ‘ethnic’.
The differences and distinctiveness of the region, and hence the stereotypes and the biases, are deeply rooted in the nationalist imagination. In fact, in a televised segment on 11 June, a CNN News18 anchor, while interviewing a family member of the deceased, stated that the Kamakhya Temple in Assam is ‘known for human sacrifice.’
It is factually incorrect and represents the racist perception that governs how people see religion and rituals being practised in the region.
What the next part of the Raja murder case does is reveal stereotypes against another vulnerable section of the population — that is, women. On 9 June, Meghalaya Police revealed that Sonam Raghuvanshi was responsible for the murder of her husband. She hired three killers, including her lover, to kill Raghu.
This particular piece of information triggered two kinds of responses. One was the overwhelming demand for an apology to the Northeast region for maligning its image. The other was the misogynist attacks on women, with the institution of marriage and men’s safety being questioned.
Not surprisingly, feminists were blamed for it. This is ironic because feminist activists have been historically critical of the institution of marriage. Marriage has been interlinked with women’s subjugation and restriction of autonomy. In India, women have been the victims of dowry and either murdered by their husbands’ families or forced to kill themselves. Dowry is not the only barrier for women.
Married women face multiple pressures of childbearing — especially sons — care work, housework, etc. But incidents like Raja Raghuvanshi’s murder create more buzz. When the victim is a man, especially from a privileged background, it becomes an abhorrent crime that people take notice of.
The media and society are not interested when victims are marginalized people. In fact, in the same period, several other crimes did not make similar kinds of headlines.
For instance, the body of Rosmita Hojai (a 26-year-old woman) from the Dima Hasao district of Assam was found on Tuesday along the banks of a river in Pauri Garhwal district of Uttarakhand. But this case has not ignited media debates like Raja Raghuvanshi’s.
This highlights how the marginalized are often scapegoated in times of crisis. Be it people from the Northeast or women, it becomes easy to associate marginalized identities with deviant activities.
Very often, people from the Northeast continue to bear the burden of such stereotypes when they migrate to other regions. They are racially attacked, denied housing by landlords in many areas, and their cultural habits such as food are questioned. Northeastern women are also categorized as ‘sexually loose’, ‘immoral’, and ‘easily available’.
Racist and dehumanized portrayals further increase the chances of violence and hostility against migrants from the region.
Similarly, it also increases the chance of others coming into the region being perceived as outsiders and puts their safety at risk. Thus, what we require is more sensible media reportage, especially in times of crises, particularly when marginalized sections of the population are involved. Instead of fuelling pre-existing biases, it is important to actively disassociate from them.
Views expressed are personal. The author is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati.