Mohammed Zubair: ‘They attacked my Muslim identity’
IN 2002, the photograph of Qutbuddin Ansari pleading for mercy with fear-ridden face and folded hands became the defining image of the Gujarat massacre. This time it is Mohammed Zubair, a 37-year-old man who was probably the first victim of organised violence in North East Delhi. A Reuters’ photograph of a man hunched on the road with goons raining blows on him with batons, stumps, hockey sticks and iron rods went viral. In the picture, Zubair was shown profusely bleeding from his head and hands even as two rioters had placed their foot on his back. A broken cricket stump was lying next to the distraught victim as other men stood around him to beat him. Many who saw the photograph concluded that the thinly bearded man probably paid with his life in the face of unbridled aggression by a dozen men.
Zubair, though, lived to tell the tale. Recuperating at his sister’s house in Inderlok, he told Frontline how the goons laid hands on him. “It was Monday. I was returning home in Chand Bagh after attending prayers at the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Qasabpura. After the ijtema, I bought some savouries and sweets near Eidgah. I had forgotten my mobile phone at home. When I reached Panchwa Pushta, I heard there was some communal tension in the area. If I had had my phone with me, my family would have told me to avoid the area. But there was no way of their getting across to me. And I had no clue about any Hindu-muslim problem. I have lived in Chand Bagh for 17 years and have never faced a problem. I tried to reach home via Bhajanpura market thinking it is a crowded market, so it will be fine. But at that time I found the entire market was closed.
“It was around 3:30; I did not have a watch or mobile to remember the exact time. I was walking towards the market. There was a crowd which had gathered. People looked at me, but nobody said anything to me. At that time I could not make out whether they were Muslims or Hindus. I walked to the subway to go across the road towards Chand Bagh. As I was entering the subway, a man standing there advised me not to take the subway as it could be dangerous. He had a tilak on his forehead. I took him to be a religious man and believed him. So I resumed walking straight towards the mazaar. After walking barely a few metres I saw a stone-pelting mob. The mazaar had been burnt. I realised I had committed a mistake by walking in this direction. One of the stone-pelters saw me and rushed towards me. I held my ground and said, ‘What’s the problem? Why are you advancing towards me?’”
Even as Zubair uttered a couple of sentences to the
attacker, a blow fell on his head, then another on his back. Within no time, he was surrounded by hatefilled young men who hit him hard. “A man hit me with a sword. Another man hit me with a stump. Some wore helmets, some used masks. They raised cries of ‘Jai Shri Ram’. They shouted, ‘Mullah ko maro…bolo Jai Shri Ram’. Nobody came forward to help me or protect me. No Hindu or Muslim stepped forward. The men kept hitting me. I fell unconscious from the blows.”
As Zubair lost his consciousness, the attackers believed he was almost dead. They decided to dispose of him. “I was not fully conscious, but I have a faint recollection of men holding me by the hands and feet. They shouted, ‘Throw him on the other side of the grill,’” recalls Zubair, adding, “They dumped me on the other side. I do not know for how long I stayed there. Next I heard somebody saying, ‘Let’s take him to the hospital, he is badly injured. He could die.’
“They took me to a hospital which I learned later was Guru Tegh Bahadur Hospital. I remember hearing cries of pain from every direction in the hospital. The doctors asked me my name and my mobile number. I was not conscious enough to give them the mobile number. The doctors asked me who was with me. There was no one. The doctors then gave me some medicines, bandaged my head, hands and legs and discharged me. I told the doctors my head was hurt and that I was in a lot of pain. Meanwhile, I heard doctors telling each other, ‘We will have to chop off his hand.’ Thankfully, it was not about me, but some other patient. But, for a minute I was scared. The doctors discharged me and advised me to get the wound dressed every alternate day. I was not in a condition to walk. Somehow I borrowed somebody’s phone and managed to call my brother. Then my brother-in-law came to the hospital and took me to his house in Inderlok.”
Why was he attacked?
“I really have no clue. All I can say is that they did not attack me but my Muslim identity. I was wearing a skullcap and a salwar kameez at that time. With my cap, dress and beard, they realised I was a Muslim.”
Today, Zubair’s family members dress his wounds themselves as he cannot afford to go to a private practitioner often, and GTB Hospital is a bridge too far in tension-ridden North East Delhi. “I have a family. I have a wife and three kids. Somehow, I have to resume work. I was planning to start an air-cooler shop this summer. I do not know if that will be possible. I have bandages on my head, legs, knees. My ankles are still swollen. But everyone tells me I am just lucky to be alive.”
Ziya Us Salam
with the 1984 carnage, though one tried to dispel preconceived notions.
As one neared Karawal Nagar, one of the few Assembly seats the BJP won in the recently concluded election, a pattern of targeted destruction became apparent. There were a few vehicles, handcarts and cyclerickshaws, all burnt and blackened. Not a single shop was open on the empty roads. The congested, low-income colonies with cheek-by-jowl houses were segregated according to religion. Jaats and Gujjars constituted most of the area’s old inhabitants, their lanes separated from Muslim colonies by grill gates, long pipelines, or numerous nullahs (canals) criss-crossing the area.
Karawal Nagar was where the BJP got most of its votes during the 2019 Lok Sabha election, and Manoj Tiwari emerged a winner. In 2015, Kapil Mishra won the Assembly seat from there; he was still with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) then. In the three days and nights of violence that engulfed the area in February, Mishra was widely blamed for having instigated the mayhem. Frontline spoke to eyewitnesses and retraced the steps of the rioters to ascertain the sequence of events.
CHAND BAGH
On February 23, soon after Mishra delivered his speech, a large group of communally charged youngsters marched towards the Syed Chand Baba Dargah on the main road in Chand Bagh. They jumped a five-foot-high divider from the Hindu-dominated side of Thana Road, chanting the Jai Shri Ram slogan. In videos that emerged, boys barely in their teens were seen being handed petrol bombs and tyres to throw on the dargah, which caught fire. Emboldened by the inaction of the policemen standing around, the crowd ran towards the road between Chand Bagh and Khajuri Khas.
The first house on that road belonged to Bhure Khan, who was just about for sit down to lunch with his family. When he first heard the commotion, he thought it was a minor scuffle that would soon die down. But as the crowd surged and the police fired tear gas shells at his house instead of controlling the crowd, he realised this was not going to end well. In a split-second decision, he gathered his family, about 15 of them including the aged and the young, and jumped terraces to escape to a relative’s house in another colony. When he came back a day later, his home was completely charred and the shops on the ground floor were burnt beyond repair. The fruit carts outside had been burnt along with the fruits. All vehicles belonging to the family were burnt. A shop right next door, however, was untouched.
Chand Bagh resembled a war zone. Along the Dayalpur main road that led to the Eastern Yamuna Canal, shops, houses and vehicles belonging to Muslims were charred beyond recognition. Debris, glass shards and chunks of bricks carpeted the roads, making it impossible for vehicles to move. One had to literally pick one’s way through now hazardous materials to walk a few paces to anywhere. Tension and fear hung in the air like gas that could combust at a moment’s notice. Entire
lanes were barricaded behind corrugated sheets, ropes, tables and handcarts, and in all of them there were numerous stories of how rampaging mobs chased, attacked and abused Muslims. Victims told Frontline that the mobs did not comprise local residents but “outsiders” who had most probably come in from surrounding Hindu areas. Instead of helping the victims, policemen had run with the mobs, pitching in with tear gas shells, hand grenades and stones to target the victims.
Taj Mohd, a former councillor of Nehru Vihar, tried to organise a peace meeting by rallying around Hindu and Muslim neighbours. “Five hundred metres away from here, at Sherpur Chowk, a bunch of miscreants are sitting right now. Last night they were chanting religious slogans and provoking us: ‘Choodi pehenke baith gaye ho kya ghar pe? Baahar aao’ [Are you sitting at home wearing bangles? Come out!]. They were also intermittently firing guns. The armed forces are not removing them. Along with the DCP [Deputy Commissioner of Police], we conducted a peace march with a flag. But they did not listen to us even with the DCP present and instead raised slogans about Modi and mullah.” The peace march made its way back with great difficulty, its members fearing for their lives.
He said that earlier Gujjar and Muslim leaders sat together and sorted things out through dialogue whenever there were skirmishes between the communities. “But this time it is different. The rioters are not willing to listen to anybody,” he said, with terror in his voice. He was surrounded by local residents who narrated the horrors they had faced. A bullet hit a 15-yearold girl in the hand as she stood on her balcony. An e-rickshaw showroom was first emptied of computers and laptops and then set on fire. An Ashrafi pharmacy was burnt down. A mobile phone shop was looted, while a cloth shop was looted and burnt. Someone has had two sons missing since the violence started. And through it all, “the policemen sided with the Hindu rioters and fired tear gas shells at us”.
Between Chand Bagh and the main Karawal Nagar road lies the Eastern Yamuna Canal. A crowd of photographers, local BJP leaders and Rapid Action Force (RAF) personnel stood around as three bare-chested men tried to pull out something from the garbage heaped in the canal. It was the body of Intelligence Bureau officer Ankit Sharma. His uncle, Sudhir Sharma, recognised him from his outstretched arm but persuaded the manual scavenger to show his face for confirmation. While the first reaction of all present was that he was murdered by a Muslim mob, statements made by his brother later contradicted the allegation. He said Ankit had been dragged away by a mob chanting Jai Shri Ram when he stepped out of the house to check on the situation.
Beyond the canal was a predominantly Hindu locality. More than 20 cars parked in a lot were burnt and damaged. The remains of a wedding feast being cooked were still simmering above it. The building next door, the tallest in the area, belonged to the now suspended AAP leader Tahir Hussain, who has since been arrested on charges of murdering Ankit Sharma. Chunks of bricks thrown from its terrace lined the street below like red snow. Govardhan Bhatt alleged there were drums of petrol stacked inside. He accused Hussain of facilitating the violence. While it was hard to verify the accusations one way or the other, what was certain was that Hussain would soon be made a scapegoat by the authorities, egged on by his persistent Hindu neighbours.
MUSTAFABAD
In Chand Bagh, local residents asked this correspondent to visit Shiv Vihar, the place worst affected in the violence. As rumours flew thick and fast on the ground and on social media, I decide to check it out. About 2.5 km from Chand Bagh, Shiv Vihar is inside Mustafabad. Trucks full of Muslim men were fleeing the area with whatever belongings they had managed to salvage, giving an inkling of the state of terror in Shiv Vihar. A few young boys milling around with minor injuries on their bodies told Frontline that they could hear the sounds of firing until four in the morning. Some 40 of them had been injured in the stone-pelting that both sides had engaged in, they said. Three corpses lay under the street lights for hours, but the policemen did not let them touch the bodies. Three schools in the area were destroyed. The Arun Modern Public Senior Secondary School got burnt when the shop next door belonging to a Muslim was set on fire. But the principal and security guard of the school blamed Muslim mobs. “The parents of the Muslim children who study here ignited the fire,” the principal alleged. The school is close to the Farooqiya mosque, which was attacked and burnt. The mosque and the madrasa attached to it had supported protests against the CAA in the Brijpuri puliya close by. Hindu sentiment against the protesters was palpable in the reactions of the area’s Hindus, who said they had been “tolerating” the Muslims sitting on the roads but participating in arson was no way to protest. They seemed to be, wilfully or otherwise, unaware of the role of Hindu mobs in the arson.
Further away, two more schools were destroyed. As with every other property in the area, schools were also identified as either Hindu or Muslim. In a rare scene, the DRP Convent School on Brijpuri was being guarded by the police, who were not guarding anything or anyone else in the entire area. The policemen told Frontline that it was a Hindu school that was attacked by a Muslim mob. The Rajdhani Public Senior Secondary School next door, a “Muslim” school, was also attacked, but the policemen made light of it.
On the lane next to Rajdhani School, “Pal Dairy wali gali” in Shiv Vihar tiraha, everything was completely gutted. Behind it was Mahalakshmi Enclave, where Hindus alleged that Muslim mobs had engaged in violence. Gas cylinders thrown from the school buildings lay in gutters around their homes, and they showed cars that were burnt. An iron gate separates the colony from a Muslim neighbourhood. Residents said the local people were not involved in the violence and asserted that all the
miscreants had come from outside. They accused the owner of Rajdhani Public School of facilitating the violence.
There was no way to check the veracity of the accusations and counter-accusations. The only certain thing is the veil of hatred and distrust that seemed to have descended over these localities. Everywhere, the police had failed to take cognisance of the targeted violence and stop armed miscreants from attacking Muslims. In this situation, some Muslims took it upon themselves to retaliate and protect their homes and neighbourhoods from rampaging mobs. This was a departure from the past, when the victims of targeted violence did not attempt armed self-defence. The retaliation seemed to have pushed back some Hindus and forced them to focus on guarding their own homes and families. Conversations with both groups affirmed this theory. But, as has become the norm, instead of booking the aggressors, the Delhi Police cracked down on the victims of the pogrom.
Engineered mayhem BY T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
THE genesis of the engineered riots in parts of North East Delhi, which claimed over 50 lives, can be traced to the counter mobilisation against the protests against the CAA and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). In the area where it all began, that is, beneath the Jafrabadmaujpur-babarpur metro, lies a narrow middle lane on a wide stretch of a road called Asha Ram Tyagi Marg. On one side is Seelampur and, on the other, Welcome Colony, demographically mixed areas though Muslims are in slightly larger numbers here compared with other areas in North East Delhi. On almost every pillar that props up the metro track was inscribed “No NRC” and “No CAA”, as were the boundary walls on either side of the road. Women had been sitting on protest on this lane for over a month, on the pattern of the Shaheen Bagh protests in South West Delhi.
Not far from the Seelampur police post, on one side of the pavement was a tent, also a site of anti-caa protests. A little further down the road was Kardampuri, where, next to a nullah, a tent had been pitched for similar peaceful protests. These were all “mini Shaheen Baghs” that had cropped up in several areas of Delhi. Today, the tents lie all torn and tattered, evidence of the havoc that was unleashed on the unsuspecting women on February 23 and after. It was a Sunday, and as was the practice, women had congregated at the respective protest sites, including under the middle lane of the Jafrabad metro line.
On that same route was located a temple, around which a slightly belligerent crowd began to gather. Earlier in the day, BJP leader Kapil Mishra addressed a gathering and threatened to remove the protesters within three days if the police failed to do so. A few days earlier, the Bhim Army had given a call for a Bharat
Bandh on February 23 to protest against the Supreme Court order on reservation. In solidarity with the call, the women who were sitting on the anti-caa protest came onto the main road and sat in a dharna. As has been the case in each of these sit-ins, women formed the core of the protests. But they were flanked by men who stand by in support. The group that had gathered near the temple started pelting stones at the protesters on the stretch between Jafrabad and the Maujpur metro lines.
Frontline tried talking to Hindu shopkeepers and people near the temple about the events on that day. Barring one youngster who said briefly that the stonepelting began from the temple side, no one was willing to give any details. There was no violence heret other than stone-pelting.
A little further down the road is Kardampuri, where a volunteer of the Aman Ekta Committee set up by the Delhi Police said that had the police acted in time, the carnage would not have happened. Farzana, a resident of Kardampuri, said: “I saw it all happening from my terrace. They threw the blankets and mattresses of the protesters into the nullah. Vardivaaley saath mein thi [the men in uniform were with them]. Everyone saw, and everyone knows. Nothing can be done. It began from Maujpur, then Kardampuri. There were close to 3,000 women protesting on this entire road. There were around 500 pro-caa people, but the police were with them.”
“Do you know why there was no violence in Chandni Chowk? It was because business there is controlled by Hindus,” said Farooq, a young man. In the riot-affected areas, he said, people were “just surviving”. The violence and the arson were targeted against Muslims, their lives, their homes and their property. At the T-point of Asha Ram Tyagi Marg, on the right is the Muslim-owned Gokulpuri tyre market, located hundred metres away from the police station. The entire market was gutted on the evening of February 24 evening. Further down was Shiv Vihar, the worst affected area in the riots. It was perhaps the burning Gokulpuri market, with the police nowhere in sight, that served as a wake-up call after the euphoria over the Donald Trump visit.
On the left of the T-point was Wazirabad Road. On this stretch, Bhajanpura, Yamuna Vihar and Khajuri Khas witnessed similar sagas of arson and murder. The Uttar Pradesh border is not far from Gokulpuri. A CRPF jawan on duty said the violence was the handiwork of “outsiders”. “I didn’t sleep for three nights continuously. Only today I have given my uniform to be washed. The clashes were preventable. The border is just across. Anyone can come and slip through unnoticed. After the sealing of the border, there has been little trouble. If the Army had not been called, there would have been much greater loss of life. Rioters took advantage of the situation,” he said. Personnel of the Sashastra Seema Bal, a paramilitary unit, stopped journalists from entering the area as some shops were still smouldering on February 27, two days after the arson.
Panic had set in. Kamil, a tabla player in Khajuri Khas, said there was an announcement during maghrib
(the sunset prayer) that people should not step outside their homes. He also said that his area, which had more Muslims than Hindus, ensured that no miscreant entered or caused damage to the temple or the Hindu families living there. “We discouraged community members from congregating near the temple,” he said. He said the area was dominated by Gujjars, who were the original landowners. “Who started it at Jafrabad-maujpur is not the issue. Why did it start at all? Do not the citizens of this country have a right to protest against a law they feel is bad for them?” he said. Kamil’s cousin’s home in Brahmapuri was looted. “it is being projected as if it was the fault of the minority community. How is it that there was no problem before Kapil Mishra gave his mischievous statement?” Kamil asked.
Mishra was recently given Y-grade security. No first information report has been filed against him for his hate speeches.
‘WE FEEL SAFE IN THE DAYTIME’
All people in the riot-affected areas Frontline spoke to said they no longer felt safe on the road after sundown, especially the shortcuts along the open drains. Many Muslim families have shifted out from residential areas dominated by Hindus to places they feel are “safer”. Mohammad Yunous, a faculty member of Zakir Hussain College, shifted from his flat in Loni on the Delhi-uttar
Pradesh border despite being assured of safety by his Hindu neighbour. “I am from Bengal, from a family of teachers. My neighbour Deepak Kumar told me I had nothing to fear, but I did not feel confident after hearing about all these incidents in the area. I moved out immediately,” he told Frontline.
Zahir, who owns a belt shop, told Frontline that the riot was deliberately started: “Our fight was with the government, not with our neighbours. Police ne poori choot de di. Do din ke baad aaye. Karobar khatam ho gaya [The police gave the miscreants complete licence and arrived only two days later. Our livelihoods are ruined].
Frontline met a harassed-looking Rizwan on February 27 on the main road in Kardampuri. A resident of nearby Gokulpuri, he had sought refuge with some relatives in Kardampuri as his house was razed to the ground on February 24. He said: “They targeted us. I must have made 500 calls to the police. The standard response was ‘bhej rahein hain’ [we are sending]. My Hindu neighbours told me that the police did nothing and watched the loot happen. If they had fired one shot, all could have been saved. The jungle raj here is worse than in U.P.” Section 144 had been imposed in the area and a policeman waved him away, not allowing him to speak anymore. “Please do something about this,” he said before leaving.
The route to main Mustafabad, where Haji Younus of
the AAP won with a huge margin, can be accessed through Brijpuri. Here shops belonging to both Hindus and Muslims were looted on February 25. Arun Modern Public Senior Secondary School, owned by a former Congress legislator, was attacked. So was the Farooqi mosque, next to which was an anti-caa protest site on the culvert of a drain. “There was firing from both sides, close to 90 rounds maybe,” said Pyare Mohammad, a shoe-seller whose shop was looted and burnt. The office of property dealer Yoginder Singh on one side of Pyare Mohammad’s shop was untouched. On the other side, Qayoor Ali’s software shop, which opened into the school, was looted and burnt. The school, where most of the pupils are from the minority community, was partially gutted and the vehicles parked on its premises, including Yoginder Singh’s, were burnt.
According to Yoginder Singh, before the riots there had been apprehensions that the anti-caa protests would lead to something untoward. He disapproves of the protests.
But Neetu Chaudhary, cashier of the partially gutted Arun Modern Public Senior Secondary School, did not agree. “We never had any problem with the anti-caa protesters. In fact, they used to help the children form a queue after school hours as this road is very congested. They used to tone down their slogans and singing during school hours. I don’t understand how they are to blame for this. The attackers were wearing helmets and had covered themselves with damp blankets, probably to prevent getting singed,” she said, recalling what she had heard from the school’s watchman. (Women in other areas also said that rioters wore helmets.) “We tried all helplines. The police post at Dayalpur isn’t far away, but no one came. On phone they reassured us. The fire service came only the next day, on February 26, at 4 a.m. Everything had been burnt by then, including admit cards for the tenth and twelveth exams,” Neetu Chaudhary
said. She also said that the home of one Muslim was attacked as people suspected there was firing from the rooftop. N.K. Automobile Repair showroom owned by a Muslim in the Hindu area of Brijpuri was set ablaze, but the adjoining shops were left untouched. “He must have set it on fire himself” was what majority community members had to say about it.
Rizwan, a tailor who was at Farooqi Mosque when the attack happened, said around a hundred people carried out the attack. The mosque had a madrasa too, he said, where young boys were staying. “We were saying our evening prayers when they attacked. One boy died there and then in the firing. We picked up another body from under the bridge. When we tried to pick up the injured, they fired at us. Our muezzin tried pleading with them, but to no avail. The police were also there, abusing us. Then both Imam Mufti Tahir and the muezzin were beaten up. The police were not there to protect us. We escaped from a back door into the lanes behind. The CCTV was broken so that there wouldn’t be any proof. I escaped miraculously,” he said.
At the Chaman Park Mustafabad relief camp, a young woman who had been a participant in the protest at Brijpuri, told Frontline that she and others took refuge in the mosque after a protest march on February 25 was attacked by a mob, and that they were witness to a young man being killed. “We did not utter a word lest we be exposed. But we saw our young men being beaten and burnt and thrown in the nullah,” she said, weeping as she recounted the horror. After everything quietened down the next day, the women left Brijpuri for Mustafabad.
“Where Muslims were in the majority, there was damage to some Hindu homes and property. Where they were in a minority, they were attacked, as in Shiv Vihar, Karawal Nagar and Khajuri Khas,” said Bilal Hashmi, a telecom service operator whom Frontline met at a Mustafabad relief camp. There were three police stations in a radius of 10 kilometres—dayalpur-mustafabad, Gokulpuri and Karawal Nagar—and none of them seemed to have responded to frantic calls for help.
‘WHAT DOES GOVERNMENT WANT FROM US?’
Inside a house in Chaman Park of Mustafabad, which turned into a relief centre, at least a hundred women were huddled together with their children. They were residents of Shiv Vihar, where Muslims are numerically weak (30 per cent, while Hindus make up 70 per cent of the residents) compared with the main area of Mustafabad. Fatima, a woman in her twenties who had taken part in the anti-caa protests was in tears as she recalled the ordeal: “The tension started on Monday, February 24. Around 10:30 a.m. we saw angry crowds on the street. There were residents from Johripur as well as outsiders. We saw them burst gas cylinders to blast open homes. There are eight Hindu homes in our lane. They said they’d save us, but we couldn’t believe them,” she said. Sadia, another young woman, had fled with 15 others of her family, the youngest a baby of five months. “We fled in the dead of night. We saw them attack homes with gas
cylinders. Aakhir sarkar humse chahti kya hai? [What is it that the government wants from us?] Don’t we even have the right to protest?”
On February 23, several young women from Shiv Vihar had left home to join the women at the Brijpuri culvert. Twenty-something Shahana, a resident of Mustafabad Extension, was among them. At around 4 p.m., they marched to C-block Yamuna Vihar and squatted on the main road. “We were 200 or so. We felt that as the government was not listening to us, we needed to take our protest to the main road where we would be seen and heard. Sirf Azaadi ke naarey lagaa rahe the [We were only shouting slogans of freedom]. We even did our namaaz on the road,” she said. Most anti-caa sit-ins by women have been all-night affairs, and the young women of Mustafabad-birjpuri-shiv Vihar had wanted to do the same. But at around 10 p.m., Shahana said, a mob shouting “Jai Shri Ram” began approaching them. A car drove right up to where they were sitting and some people got off from it and began calling out loudly. “The stone-throwing started immediately. The police were there trying to push us into the green buses but not doing anything to stop the stone-pelting. One of the attackers came close to me and threatened me, ‘Ab tum log chamaaron ka saath dogey?’ [So now are you with the untouchables?]” she said. The reference was to Dalits and the Bhim Army’s call for a Bharat Bandh. Some 20 women ran towards the Farooqui mosque in Brijpuri for shelter, only to find that it, too, was under attack. It was here that the women saw some young men being killed by the rioters. “I saw them burn a young boy in the library that we had put up at the protest site,” said Shahana, sobbing. “I can’t forget that scene. The police were handing tear gas shells to the rioters. I have not been able to sleep since that day.” She said that the rioters fired at them from a school, which turned out to be Arun Modern School.
SHIV VIHAR
Bilal Hashmi from Shiv Vihar said he was at home on February 24. Around noon he heard shouts of “ladai ho gayi hai” (fighting has started). “I saw people running towards Shiv Vihar, shouting that Muslims had been attacked. Stones were flying in all directions. Dono taraf se pathar baazi thi lekin Mussalmaan yahaan kam hain [there was stone-pelting from both sides but Muslims are fewer here],” he said. Hashmi moved to Mustafabad that very night with his family. So did Nizamuddin, whose wife, Raziya, said that she had to drag her aged mother-in-law who could not walk. The stone-pelting went on for 14 hours.
Most Muslim families in Shiv Vihar are from parts of western Uttar Pradesh such as Mainpuri, Etah, Etawah and Farookhabaad. They sold their land to settle in North East Delhi. Many have lived there for almost 15 to 20 years. “We have nowhere else to go to. We have no choice but to return to our homes. Aaj tak aisa manjar nahi dekha [We have never witnessed this kind of a terror before],” said Nizamuddin, originally from Bijnor. Ikram Malik, in whose house several families from Shiv Vihar had taken refuge, said that some 2,000 people had been displaced from that area alone. “Here in Indira Vihar, there are two Hindu families and a temple. They have nothing to fear from us. Many have gone back to the villages. Some are in the Babu Nagar area, sheltered by families like us,” he said.
When Frontline visited Shiv Vihar on February 27, it was like a ghost town. Barring paramilitary forces and the occasional stray dog, the streets were empty. Two schools, belonging to two different communities, had been burnt; a mosque, shops, cars and homes belonging to chiefly Muslims had been set ablaze. “The electricity
supply was cut off. The violence began at 3 p.m. on February 24 and went on until 2 a.m. It was only on the 26th that we started coming out, but because of Section 144 we couldn’t assemble,” said Ashok Sharma, whose paint shop was set ablaze. “But the Muslims suffered greater losses. It was very wrong, whoever started this. Even in 1992 [the year the Babri Masjid was demolished], nothing happened. I called several times for the police. No one came. Kisi ka baap maraa, kisi ka beta gaya [someone had lost a father, someone a son],” he said.
Tabrez Alam narrowly escaped getting killed. “I was returning from Bhagirath Vihar. Some men shouting slogans accosted me with swords. I begged them to spare me. An old man appeared from nowhere and took me away. I owe my life to him,” he said.
Inside the desolate lanes of Shiv Vihar, some homes had pieces of paper with “Jai Shri Ram” inscribed on them stuck on front doors. These were untouched by the violence, lending credence to the theory that local residents helped rioters to pick out Muslim homes and target them for arson and looting. “Dalits in Johripur saved many Muslim families,” said Waasil, a social worker.
Elsewhere, too, people said that Dalits came to the rescue of Muslims. But Omkar, a resident of phase 7 of Shiv Vihar, said that “the looters were jamadaars [cleaners belonging to the Scheduled Castes] from Johripur”, but the allegation could not be verified. He added that the violent mob had some 2,500 people and Muslims suffered the most. “For three-four days there was no police here. It was only after the RAF [Rapid Acction Force] and the CRPF came that there is a feeling of safety,” he said. Around 350 Muslim homes had been targeted in Shiv Vihar alone. Many Muslims were convinced that there were many local residents in the mob from Jagdamba Colony.
LOCAL HAND
Muslim homes were set on fire and looted in Khajuri Khas Extension in Karawal Nagar Assembly constituency. Mehboob Alam and several others had sought refuge in Muslim-inhabited Chandu Nagar Colony. “The lane in which I live is a mixed locality. My house is the first one in the lane. They threw stones at us from neighbouring homes, and our Hindu neighbours watched it happen, doing nothing. I could identify all of them. They were local boys,” he said. When he finally got through to the police, they said they were coming in 10 minutes but never did. Two rows of Muslim homes, one on Karawal Nagar road and the other in Khajuri Khas Extension, were attacked. In the market, too, Muslim shops were singled out and burnt. Naved, an eyewitness, said that on February 23 two truckloads of people came shouting “Jai Shri Ram” and told everyone to down their shutters. “They first burnt Khan Communication and looted it and then started throwing stones at Sanjar Chicken Shop. The owner, Mumtaz, told them to stop. They vandalised his shop and burnt it,” he said. Salman, who owned a money remittance and tour and travel business, said his shop was looted in the night. “Who is going to compensate me?” he asked. Salma Begum, Asad, Saddam, Md Amir Hussain, Mohd Muna, Khatitullah, Rabina Khatoon, Mohd Razzaq, Md Shafi Alam, Najmool Khatoon, Mehtoon Khatoon, Amir, Abdul Mannan, Noor Salam, Mohd Amjad, Jamshida, Ruksana (both widows)—all narrated stories of destruction and loss. They said the attackers were all local residents led by local BJP leaders of E Block, lane number 4. A sub-inspector, Hardesh Kumar, was also involved, they alleged.
POLITICS AND THE PLACE
Of the five Assembly constituencies in North East district, the violence was concentrated in the four contiguous constituencies of Karawal Nagar, Mustafabad, Gokalpur and Ghonda. In all four seats, where the proportion of Muslims is higher than the capital’s average, the votes in the recent Assembly election were completely polarised and almost equally divided between the AAP (48 per cent) and the the BJP (47.5 per cent). The seats were also equally divided, and the fight was closer than in the rest of the city. Compared with the Assembly election of 2015, the increase in the BJP’S vote share in 2020 in
these four constituencies was phenomenal, from 33.7 per cent in 2015 to 47.5, a much higher gain than the average for the city (which saw an increase from 33 per cent to 39 per cent). This helped the BJP wrest Ghonda and Karawal Nagar from the AAP, and Mustafabad (which was with the BJP in 2015) was lost only because a major part of the Congress vote in 2015 moved to the AAP. (In 2015, the Congress got 31.7 per cent of the vote and came second after the BJP). In Gokalpur, while the AAP retained the seat, three-fourths of the Bahujan Samaj Party vote in 2015 (20.6 per cent) shifted to the BJP and only the remainder went to the AAP.
If the percentage increase in votes between 2015 and 2020 is considered, it can be seen that while the total number of votes went up by 11 per cent in these four constituencies, the BJP vote increased by 56.5 per cent and the increase was significant in all constituencies. The votes of the AAP actually fell in Ghonda and Karawal Nagar (owing to the Kapil Mishra effect as he had represented Karawal Nagar earlier) and this was compensated for by a massive increase in Mustafabad (by 98.5 per cent) and a more modest increase of 24.2 per cent in Gokalpur, where the BJP vote increased by 75.6 per cent. It seems clear that the BJP’S attempts to create a polarisation on religious lines during the Assembly election AAP obscured the otherwise the clear evidence that North East Delhi’s communal violence was just waiting to happen.