‘I buried eight bodies in this graveyard with my own hands’

NEW DELHI: A grub hoe in his hand, his pants folded up to his knees, the sleeves of his T-shirt stained with fresh soil as the 20-year-old man Asif stands barefoot inside a recently dug grave and is halfvisible in the huge graveyard of Mustafabad in Northeast Delhi. He rarely looks up to talk to instead moves his trained hands to dig the new grave he has been asked to, piling up a huge brown soil heap on the periphery of the grave which measures close to a medium height person.

Asif, the gravedigger, was the busiest man since the riots broke out in North East Delhi. The dead bodies started coming in the graveyard, much before the media flashed their names on TV screens.

“The first body at the graveyard of a riot victim came on February 25. It was a continuous process since then. Though digging a grave is not new for me, but the bodies of riotaffected victims were different. They were brought here after the postmortem. You can understand what I mean,” Asif said as he adjusts the porous fluffy soil with his hands on the edge of the rectangular grave.

Asked how many bodies of riot-affected victims he has buried in the Mustafabad graveyard which shares the boundary with Eidgah, which houses the riot-affected victims and their families, he looks up and says “I myself buried 8 bodies of riot victims. It was the toughest job I ever did in my life”

“Hamari zindagi me hi dange pahli baar hue hain,” he said. (I have seen riots first time in my life.)

The graves of the two brothers 30-year-old Aamir and 19-year-old Hashim are nearly 6 feet distance from each other. Mohammad Aamir was on his way back with his 19-year-old brother Hashim, when they were allegedly murdered and their bodies dumped into a drain in Gokalpuri during the communal clash on February 25 night.

“On the day when these two brothers were laid to rest in the grave, there was very little space in the graveyard as the mourners poured in because of the immense tragic loss to the family, many cried,” Asif recalls. “Bhaisahab, Shiv Vihar se teen bodies aayi thi,” he says. ( Three bodies came from Shiv Vihar.)

In the worst riots in North East Delhi since 1984, the death toll has crossed 50.

His hands stopped as the grave he was digging was complete now. He was waiting again as the recovery of the body, the postmortem and then the graveyard journey would continue for some more time.