People return but find homes reduced to ashes

NEWDELHI: Shaheen, 48, returned home after five days on Saturday morning, to find the top two floors of her three-storey house on the main Chand Bagh road charred. She and her family of six had bounded over several terraces to save their lives on Monday, when rioters ran amok, throwing stones and firing bullets.

Rummaging through the remains, she came across a copy of the Quran locked in a cupboard, unharmed. Mostly everything else was reduced to ashes.

“At least 17 of us, including my extended family and neighbours, left our houses on Monday when the firing started. A relative called that evening to tell us that houses on the main road were being torched. All this time we stayed at a relative’s house. I still haven’t brought my daughter-inlaw back,” Shaheen said.

While rescue and rehabilitation teams went through the area on Saturday to replace burnt cables, most houses were without water and power. Most streets of riot-torn north-east Delhi echo with similar cries.

People who moved out of their houses during the violence have started coming back, now that the violence has ended, replaced by uneasy calm. Most have lost entire houses and belongings. Lives have been torn apart, and residents are fighting to put it back together, piece by piece.

Shehzad Khan, 43, a resident of Chand Bagh, lost his house and shop in the riots. “I lost around ₹60,000-70,000 cash and everything else. My wife and children are still back in our village near Baraut in UP. They are too scared to return. I am trying to figure out how to set up my shop again, because we need money,” said Khan, who used to sell sugarcane to vendors.

In nearby Brijpuri, a narrow back-alley helped save many lives. At least 10 of the 15-20 houses in the lane were completely torched.

Virender Chaudhary, 69, and his son came back on Saturday to see their house, a three-storey building that also housed a shop.

Chaudhary, his wife and daughter-in-law were home when a mob ran in with buckets of petrol and started pounding down the doors on Tuesday evening. “The three of us ran in our slippers. If we did not have a back door opening to the lane on the other side, we would have died. That moment still haunts me. We lost everything,” said Chaudhary, who plans to go back to his village in Meerut.