Afrazul helped men from Malda get work, his only vice was bidis
Twenty-four labourers lived in four rooms of a rented single-storey house in Rajsamand’s Dhoinda. Afrazul (48) was one of them.
He worked as a labour and sometimes doubled up as a labour contractor, facilitating his fellow men from Sayadpur village of West Bengal’s Malda district find work here.
“He had only one vice. He used to smoke bidis,” says Inaul Sheikh, Afrazul’s nephew, a woollen cap covering his head.
He says Afrazul did not wrong anyone.
“Go to the labour market at Jhal Chakki and ask the people there who have seen him for the past 12-13 years. They will tell you what kind of a person he was,” he adds.
If five or six years ago, some person from Malda took a girl from here what does it have to do with my uncle, he asks.
Afrazul’s son-in-law Mosharaff Khan says that his father-inlaw left for the labour market at around 9 am on Wednesday. “There was a slight drizzle. We were watching television when he had tea and left. At 11.30am, he called to say that some labourers need to transfer money back home and needed my help,” he
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said.
At 3pm, it was Inaul who got a call. The owner of the bike whose registration number ended with 786 had met an ‘accident’, the person on the other hand said.
When Inaul reached the spot, police had cordoned off the area where the charred body of his uncle laid. His uncle was not very religious and occasionally offered the juma prayer.
Some labourers are cooking rice in the courtyard of the house that is marked with firewood, empty cans, rusted machines and more scrap. Their neon fleece blankets are visible inside the room. They earlier lived in Kakoli, another area of the district, and had moved into this house some six months ago.
Mosharaff says Afrazul gave Rs 12,000 to him on his marriage. “Garib majdoor aadmi kitna dega (how much could a poor labourer have given,” quips Afrazul’s fellow Samiul Sheikh, who had been in Rajsamand on and off for the past 18 years and has knows the deceased for long.
The labourers have their families back home in Malda. They keep coming back to Rajasthan depending on employment.
Afrazul’s wife and three daughters also live in Malda. The elder two daughters are married, while the youngest was to be married two months later.