Reeling after communal riots bloodbath

THE wounded came in waves. First in ones and twos, limping and staggering in, and then they came in wheelbarrows, with bleeding skulls and stabbed necks. Next, the motorcycles and auto-rickshaws arrived, their seats stained with the blood of as many as they could hold.

As the Mustafabad neighbourhood of India’s capital was ravaged by communal riots for three days this week, the Al-hind Hospital turned from a community clinic into a trauma ward.

Doctors like MA Anwar were, for the first time, dealing with injuries such as gunshot wounds, crushed skulls and torn genitals.

“I wanted to cry and scream,” he recalled. “Something inside of me died during those three days.”

On the eve of US president Donald Trump’s first state visit to India last Sunday, Hindus and Muslims in

New Delhi charged at each other with homemade guns and crude weapons, leaving the streets where the rioting occurred resembling a war zone, with houses, shops, mosques, schools and vehicles up in flames.

More than 40 people were killed and hundreds more wounded in New Delhi’s worst communal riots in decades. The authorities have struggled to identify some of the bodies because of the gruesomeness of the injuries.

While both sides behaved brutally, most of the victims were Muslim.

The authorities haven’t given an official account of what sparked the riots, although the violence appeared to be a culmination of growing tensions that followed the passage of a new citizenship law in December.

The law fast-tracks naturalisation for some religious minorities from neighbouring countries but not Muslims.

Opponents say it violates India’s secular constitution and further marginalises the 200 million Muslims in this Hindu-majority nation of 1.4 billion people. The law spurred massive protests that left at least 23 dead.

But what unfolded this week was far more brutal, with mobs hacking people with swords, burning others alive and bludgeoning people to death. A Muslim man had his legs spread so far apart that the lower half of his body tore. His condition remained critical.

Al-hind hospital’s doctors said the authorities kept ambulances from reaching some places.

A little after midnight on Wednesday – more than 72 hours after the violence began – a New Delhi High Court passed an extraordinary order directing the police to provide safe passage for ambulances. It was too late for many victims. |