Delhi Police face scrutiny as death toll in riots hits 35
Government says officials working to restore confidence in people
Mohammad Zubair was on his way home from a local mosque in northeast New Delhi when he came across a large crowd. He turned towards an underpass to avoid the commotion; it proved to be a mistake.
Within seconds, he was cowering on the ground surrounded by more than a dozen young men, who began beating him with wooden sticks and metal rods. Blood flowed from his head, spattering his clothes. The blows intensified. He thought he would die.
Zubair provided his version of events at a relative’s home in another part of the capital, his head wrapped in bandages.
The mid-afternoon attack on Monday, captured in a dramatic Reuters photograph, came against a backdrop of tension and violence.
Near the area of the Indian capital where it occurred, Muslim and Hindu protesters had been fighting pitched battles for hours across a concrete and metal barrier that divided the main thoroughfare, throwing rocks and primitive petrol bombs.
Screaming mobs
But the sight of a mob screaming pro-Hindu slogans suddenly turning on an unarmed individual, apparently because he was a Muslim, was a sign that growing tensions between members of India’s two dominant religions may be hard to contain.“They saw I was alone, they saw my cap, beard, shalwar kameez [clothes] and saw me as a Muslim,” Zubair told Reuters. “They just started attacking, shouting slogans. What kind of humanity is this?”
‘Everything will be fine’
BJP spokesman Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga said his party did not support any kind of violence, including the attack on
Zubair. He instead blamed rival parties for stoking the chaos during US President Donald Trump’s visit in order to damage India’s image.
Delhi Police go silent
“This was 100 per cent preplanned,” he said of the violence, adding that his party or its policies had nothing to do with the chaos. Reuters has no independent evidence that the protests were planned in advance. Bagga said that the federal government, which controls Delhi police, moved to deploy paramilitary forces in order to bring the situation under control. “I believe within 24 hours everything will be fine,” he added.
Delhi police were not immediately available for comment on the attack on Zubair.