Scarred and scared
Purge of secularism
Purge of secularism
BY ZIYA US SALAM
FEBRUARY 26, 2020, 10:30 a.m. Outside the Maujpur Metro station near Kabir Nagar, there is not a soul on the road. No vehicular traffic, no pedestrians, just a long row of policemen with stern visages, holding guns and batons. By the side of the road are burnt remains of a motorcycle and a car and a thousand pieces of wood, cardboard, tyres, iron railings and concrete lattice screens, some of them still smouldering. They have probably been dumped aside to allow for the free movement of traffic, of which there is none. Fear hangs thick in the air. I am on my way to Gokulpuri, a little more than a kilometre away, but the billows of smoke visible in the sky from Kabir Nagar portend disaster. As one black billow rises and fades into the sky, another makes its appearance. It goes on and on endlessly. Rows of tyre shops have been set afire in Gokulpuri, as I discover half an hour later.
It reminds 78-year-old Haji Yaqub of the 1984 massacre of Sikhs following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. At that time, he had shifted with his family from Gokulpuri just hours before violence struck the colony. “Hundreds of Sikhs were butchered in this part of the city in 1984. The media did not even get to know of it for days. The businesses of Sikhs were set on fire. I saw similar hatred in the eyes of men here and decided to move my children and grandchildren against their wishes to Mustafabad,” he says. It was scarily prescient. Not many Muslim business establishments were left unscathed in Gokulpuri. Mostly tyre shops dealing in retreads, owned by Muslims from Bijnore and Muzaffarnagar, were set ablaze on the third and fourth days of the violence, which began on February 23. A mosque was burnt down, another attacked. The families that stayed
behind paid the price; those who shifted to safety proved wise. It is the same story in neighbouring Shiv Vihar. Here Muslims and Hindus live in separate ghettoes. There are lanes in which Hindus prefer to live; some lanes in the middle are populated by Muslims. One would find an occasional Hindu house in a so-called Muslim lane or vice versa. But it did not help anyone. Says Nazish Khatoon, a resident of Gali 17 for the past 30 years: “We have never had any problem in Shiv Vihar. We used to live amicably with Hindus. Things changed after [Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader] Kapil Mishra’s speech. I did not hear the speech but got to know about it later when I suddenly found the atmosphere had become quite tense. It was Monday [February 24]. We were all at home. My father-in-law, a heart patient, was with me. We remained trapped at home the entire night as goons roamed around threatening to set our houses on fire. We bolted the doors and moved to the roof and called the police for help. They arrived only in the morning. The policemen brought us out of Shiv Vihar to Chaman Park. As soon as the police arrived, we ran out barefoot. The goons then took hold of the house and looted everything. We had saved something for our daughter’s wedding. There was my jewellery too. My husband makes rusk and bread. His savings were there too. They took everything and set the house on fire.”
Does she recognise any of the faces?
“I did not. They were probably outsiders. Most of them wore helmets and masks. Tell me who wears a helmet inside a house? It is only when your intention is to kill that you do not want to be recognised that you wear a helmet inside the house,” Afsana answers on behalf of Nazish. Afsana, too, was similarly dislocated from her house in Shiv Vihar Gali 21. “Our lives were saved by the police. But tell me, could not the same policemen who brought us out of our homes have reined in the goons? Were they so powerless that goondas holding pistols and batons scared them? No, the fact is, it was all a collusion. First the goons raised objectionable slogans. The Muslims got scared. Then the police escorted them out safely. Once the residents were out of their houses, they were looted and burnt. It was planned to the last detail. It could not be spontaneous,” she adds.
BARBARITY IN ASHOK NAGAR
In neighbouring Ashok Nagar, the scene was repeated to perfection. Masjid Maula Baksh has 11 shops around it. Ten shops belonged to Muslims, one to a Hindu. When this correspondent reached there on Sunday, March 1, one shop alone remained open; others were charred beyond recognition. All the Muslim shops were gutted. Behind the mosque is a lane where four Muslim families reside among 21 Hindu families. Each Muslim household was looted and burnt. All done systematically. And with precision.
“I understand they were all outsiders. I have lived here for 40 years and never faced any communal issues. Even when there was tension, our Hindu neighbours tried to calm us, help us. But how did the outsiders know the exact addresses of Muslims?” asks Shamshad, whose house and shop were reduced to ashes. “My son has a pavement shop selling footwear. He had brought fresh stock just a day earlier. The stuff was lying at home. The looters came, tried every all the shoes and chappals, and chose what they wanted. They also took other things like fridge, TV, cooking stove. They even took the vegetables and eggs we had stored when we first heard of the violence. Once they had robbed the house systematically for a couple of hours, they set it on fire. The police took us to the Jyoti Nagar police station when we complained of communal slogans being raised. While we sat at the station, our houses were looted, then burnt. We returned to find all our lifetime’s earnings gone. Tell me, could it have been possible without the support of the police? And that of the local people?” he says.
Mohammed Rashid, 43, who shifted to Delhi from Bulandshahr 12 years ago, reiterates the sentiments. His daughter is sitting for her Class 12 examination. Her textbooks, notebooks and admission card were part of the stuff burnt in his small house behind the masjid. “I am an autorickshaw driver. I was saving money for my daughter’s wedding and son’s admission to college. He is in Class 11. But nothing is left, not even a plate or a spoon. Who can rob with such patience and confidence without police support?” The only thing of note left behind was Rashid’s bike which was reduced to a mangled contraption. It had no petrol in it, he says. Six days after the incident, the police took it away as a piece of evidence of the violence.
MEN IN UNIFORM
Incidentally, though the men in uniform were guilty of inaction or delayed action at best, or collusion, as proved by some authentic videos, at worst, some of them suffered too. The house of Border Security Force (BSF) jawan Mohammed Anees in Khajuri Khas was burgled and set on fire and retired Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) head constable Aish Mohamed’s house was gutted in Bhagirathi Vihar. In both cases, their respective forces compensated them. While the CRPF gave Mohammad a cheque for Rs.11 lakh, the BSF decided to rebuild Anees’ house and hand it over to him as a gift for his wedding, which was due in a few months.
Meanwhile, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced a compensation of Rs.1 crore for the family of Delhi Police head constable Rattan Lal, who was slain in the line of duty. “Politics of hate and violence will not be tolerated. The common man of Delhi did not indulge in violence; outsiders, some political elements, are involved in it,” said Kejriwal.
The Delhi government was found wanting in the hour of crisis. As Irshad Alam, a resident of Mustafabad near Tayyaba Masjid, says: “We understand that the Delhi Police is under the Centre [Union Home Ministry]. The Chief Minister could not have arrested Kapil Mishra or stopped the first instance of violence. But if he had visited the area with his Ministers after the first day, a message would have gone down to everyone that the Chief Minister cared for them. Going to Raj Ghat [Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial] or asking for the Army to be deployed after three days was just political action without any honesty. Even the relief measures are inadequate.”
STATUS REPORT
According to Rashid, Shamshad and others, there was no relief camp set up by the Delhi government and hardly any volunteers of non-governmental organisations (NGOS) reached in the first five days after the violence. “We have been sleeping at relatives’ places. But for how long? The government, Central or State, has not even set up a rehabilitation centre here,” says Rashid, in the presence of his neighbour Khurshid, whose house too was reduced to ashes.
The findings of a status report filed by a team of rights and political activists comprising Anjali Bhardwaj, Annie Raja, Poonam Kaushik, Geetanjali Krishna and Amrita Johri states: “Based on the ground situation and talking to affected people, it is clear that the Central and Delhi governments have failed in providing any modicum of relief to those affected or displaced by the recent spate of violence. In each place, families which had to abandon their homes due to violence are taking refuge with their relatives or have made private arrangements in different localities or are staying in temporary accommodation provided by private individuals.”
When the Delhi government did set up relief centres and accommodation at Eidgah in Mustafabad, it was way too far for residents of Ashok Nagar and Jafrabad. Going there was itself fraught with danger. It left the residents dependent on the goodwill of their relatives. On March 1, this correspondent found 15 people living cheek by jowl in a warehouse in Chaman Park. Similarly, families were cramped inside tiny rooms in the lanes of Karawal Nagar and Babu Nagar where the Islah Public School doubled as a medical centre.
RETALIATORY ATTACKS
However, the violence was not all one-sided. There were instances when the Muslim community retaliated. The Hanuman Mandir in Shiv Vihar was vandalised. At the clinic of Dr Lokendra Singh in Bhagirathi Vihar, every
strip of medicine was singed by fire. Shakuntala Devi’s little shop nearby too was badly damaged. A few steps away in Brijpuri, a mob attacked Chaudhary Niwas, the abode of doctors, and burnt it down. As was the house of the Kaushiks. Says Vijay Kumar: “They came armed with a big drum of petrol and plastic bottles to set every thing on fire. Nobody died, but nothing is left of the house.”
The Kaushiks’ house is a minute’s walk from Farooqia Jama Masjid, which, too, was set ablaze. It was also close to the site of the protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) at Mustafabad. The site too was burnt. Although the women there escaped with their lives, the pandal, rugs, and banners were all used to makes balls of fire. The mosque and private residences near Arun Modern Public Senior Secondary School were not spared either. Two cars parked inside the school premises and the school bus were charred.
Rajdhani Public School and DPR Convent School in Shiv Vihar too bore the brunt of the attack and were, in fact, used as launch pads by goons to spread across the area, commit their crimes and retreat to safety. Says Delhi Minorities Commission Chairman Zafarul Islam Khan: “The schools share a common wall. The goons wore helmets and hid their faces. They remained there for 24 hours. They had arms and giant catapults, which they used to throw petrol bombs from the school roofs to other houses. They used heavy ropes to move from one school to another.” Also destroyed were a hundred hand-pulled carts and 11 tractors parked at the neighbouring Dr Ambedkar College.
THE HATE SPEECH
Coming back to Maujpur, amid the silence of the grave, I find myself standing barely a couple of yards from the place where Kapil Mishra made his allegedly incendiary speech on February 23, giving the Delhi Police three days’ time to uproot the peaceful anti-caa protesters from Chand Bagh, Jafrabad, Mustafabad and other places. The women had been raising their voices against the discriminatory law through entirely peaceful means for more than five weeks when Mishra threatened to take the law into his own hands. As Mishra spoke, Deputy Commissioner of Police (North East Delhi) Ved Prakash looked on making no attempt to cut short his hateful speech. It was the harbinger of what lay in store for the residents of North East Delhi.
The anti-caa protesters were removed from Jafrabad by Tuesday (February 25) evening. Elsewhere in the area, men were murdered. Women were raped and murdered. Houses were looted and set afire. Mosques were desecrated everywhere, and in some cases, reduced to ashes. A temple was vandalised, a dargah consigned to flames. The elderly and people with disabilities discovered that the raging mob was unhindered by scruples of conscience. An 80-year-old woman, waiting for the birth of her grandchild, was burnt alive, and a differently abled man, who earned his living by selling mobile recharge coupons on his rickshaw in Chand Bagh, was taunted, mutilated and murdered. As many as 52 people lost their lives and more than 450 were injured. Hundreds of houses were looted and set ablaze.
Five days after the violence began, more than 30 bodies lay in mortuaries at Guru Tegh Bahadur (GTB) Hospital, where most of the victims were taken, and Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan (LNJP) Hospital. The much smaller facility, Al Hind Hospital in Mustafabad, acted as a first-aid centre, tending to patients before they were referred to bigger hospitals.
JUDICIAL INTERVENTION
Getting to hospitals was itself no mean task in an area where purveyors of hate had spread to every highway and lane and merchants of death lurked around the corner. They initially obstructed ambulances trying to take the critically injured to GTB Hospital. It needed the intervention of the advocate Suroor Mander, who approached the Delhi High Court seeking police protection for ambulances carrying the victims of the violence.
In a rare move, the Delhi High Court heard the plea at midnight on February 25-26. The matter was heard at the residence of Justice S. Muralidhar, with Justice A.J. Bhambhani joining him. In the presence of Joint Commissioner Alok Kumar, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Rajesh Deo, and the Delhi government’s counsel Sanjoy Ghose, the judges ordered the lice to provide safe passage for ambulances and fire engines and also send
requisitions for adequate number of ambulances to private hospitals. It helped some victims.
GTB Hospital registered 20 deaths in the first three days of the violence, which started within half an hour of Mishra’s threat. Sunil Kumar, Medical Superintendent, said: “We received 189 patients till 11:30 on February 26. Seventeen patients were dead on arrival. Three died during treatment. We discharged most patients soon after admission, but as of Wednesday [February 26] afternoon, we had around 30 patients still.”
The figures soon rose to 50 odd, and the number of mortalities went up to 34 here. “Most patients were in the age group of 18 to 35 or 40,” he said, adding: “Around 70 per cent of the patients had bullet or stab injuries. In some cases they were serious, in others there was just a little graze.”
Even as doctors treated the impacted in GTB Hospital and LNJP Hospital, allegations flew thick of communal virus striking a section of the medical practitioners. A report filed by the non-governmental organisation Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA) claimed: “Far from providing healing from the trauma that victims have faced, the public health system itself has ended up inflicting secondary trauma through acts of commission and omission.”
Some patients from Karawal Nagar and Bhajanpura, too, alleged that they had not been given copies of their treatment documents and medico-legal papers, which would help them get their treatment elsewhere. The JSA report also contended that the injured were released without proper documentation of serious injuries and discharged against their wishes without the extent of their problems being ascertained.
The allegation proved true when Mohammed Zubair of Chand Bagh was almost lynched near the mazaar at Bhajanpura. He suffered grievous injuries to his head, feet, legs, knees and back in a mob attack. He was taken to GTB Hospital in a dazed condition on February 23 as the first victim of the violence. However, the doctors discharged him after bandaging his open wounds and giving him some painkillers. They did not carry out investigations to find out the extent of his injuries, his head in particular. Nearly 11 days later, he told this correspondent: “I go to a private practitioner in Bara Hindu Rao for treatment. I will see if he can do an ultrasound or other scans there.”
Hate and distrust
BY DIVYA TRIVEDI
A LONE bike stood smouldering in the middle of the deserted highway. Remnants of the preceding hours’ rampage littered the main Wazirabad road. An ambulance drove around in loops looking for a way to get into the colonies through the blocked roads. A couple of teenaged boys hacked away at a burnt cycle rickshaw. They told me not to take a video of what they were doing.
This was beyond the Trans-yamuna area, north of Shahdara, where, according to the Mishra Commission, the first murder during the 1984 anti-sikh riots was recorded. Driving through these areas, it was hard not to draw parallels