As violence ebbs, many mourn ties lost to hate
Life limps back to normal, traffic restored on riot-hit Jafrabad roads
nNEW DELHI: As Nafeesa Begum cried inconsolably, her five-yearold granddaughter Gudiya patted her occasionally. It was around 3pm on Thursday and a large crowd had gathered in the narrow lane outside their home in north-east Delhi’s Kabir Nagar. In half-an-hour, when the hearse carrying her 27-year-old son Ishtiaque Khan’s body turned into the lane, a collective wail rose from the house.
Khan, relatives said, was the victim of a stray bullet during the rioting on Monday. “He had heard about the violence and had rushed to a grocery shop to buy some essentials for his two children – one aged five and the other a toddler,” said Begum.
A lot has changed since then. The Jafrabad chowk and Maujpur chowk were opened to traffic on Thursday. While the first was the site of a sit-in protest by Muslim women against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), the other was occupied by Hindus who stood in support of the law and played Hanuman Chalisa on loop on loudspeakers installed temporarily along the blocked road. All makeshift arrangements were cleared by the police.
In Chand Bagh, around 3km from Kabir Nagar, another group gathered to attend the funeral of a four-year-old girl around 4pm. She suffered from kidney ailment and died during the riots – for want of urgent medical care, her relatives said.
“There has been a lot of damage to lives, homes, businesses and livelihoods— the hardest hit are the poor. How does it matter if they were Hindus or Muslims?” Mohammad Asif, a resident of Kabir Nagar, said.
People also shared multiple accounts of Hindus and Muslims protecting one another and each others’ religious places.
Amid blame games of who had started the violence, a few things remained constant — a uniform despair over losses, challenges to livelihood, difficulty in attending schools and colleges, accessing health care, and kitchens running without rations.
In some neighbourhoods, residents could be seen taking measurements for iron gates to ensure protection of such violence in future. Streetlights were also being repaired.
Since Sunday, when the riots started from the Jafrabad-maujpur stretch, several have left the area in fear of being attacked.
Most of them were people whose residents are on the main roads who feared maximum damage – their apprehensions eventually came true – and other than them were daily wage earners who reside as tenants in the unauthorised colonies in these localities.
“Four labourers working with me have fled to their villages in Uttar Pradesh. Work has been severely affected. We are unsure how much time will it take for business to get back to normal,” said Ranjeet Singh, a contractor based in Jyoti Nagar, another riot-hit locality.
The violence in north-east Delhi began on Sunday in the Jafrabad-maujpur arterial stretch with clashes between groups supporting and protesting against the CAA. On that day, Bharatiya Janata Paty (BJP) leader Kapil Mishra attended a public gathering in the area and gave an ultimatum to the police to clear the protest site led by anticaa protesters in three days.
While residents of the riot-hit areas continued demanding crackdown on Mishra, the BJP leader on Thursday organised a so-called demonstration in New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, demanding “peace” be restored.
Monday and Tuesday witnessed widespread rampage, arsons, murders and vandalism by armed mobs with the epicentre of the violence changing with time – engulfing one neighbourhood after another. Both Hindus and Muslims were victims of the violence – they were killed, their homes and shops ransacked and torched, mosques and shrines set ablaze and hundreds of vehicles burnt.
The violence has claimed at least 38 lives and wounded about 350 people.
In Chand Bagh, around 4km from Jafrabad, the violence primarily began on Monday afternoon when the police tried clearing an anti-caa protest site and Muslims resisted. Taking advantage of the melee, residents recalled, a mob engaged in stonepelting.
THE VIOLENCE THAT ERUPTED ON SUNDAY NIGHT HAS SO FAR CLAIMED AT LEAST 38 LIVES AND WOUNDED ABOUT 350 PEOPLE
This led to a full-blown communal violence, they said.
In 2006, the same region had witnessed widespread protests during a sealing operation against unauthorised commercial spaces. “Two children had died because of gunfire in Seelampur and the people went mad against the police. But it was not a Hindu-muslim affair,” said Deepak Kumar, a resident of Kardampura, a riot-affected area.
A resident of Chand Bagh, Mohammad Gulfam, recalled how for more than a decade, the locality was frequently raided by anti-terror agencies and Muslim men often picked up for interrogation or arrested. “Even during those times, on several occasions Hindus came to our aid. Things have changed now,” he said.
When asked what has changed over the years, several residents in these areas cited over-population, poverty and perpetual unemployment in these localities which, they said, have affected the social fabric.
On Thursday, in areas such as Jafrabad, Babarpur, Maujour, Gokalpuri and Ashok Nagar, traffic was normal though most shops remained closed. Police and paramilitary personnel could be seen deployed on the roads. In areas such as Chand Bagh and Yamuna Vihar, police could be seen doing flag marches and “area dominance” rounds, using loudspeakers to enforce an informal curfew – shooing away residents and media persons.
In areas such as Shiv Vihar, the police were on the toes as sporadic instances of vandalism and stone pelting kept happening till Thursday morning.