New Delhi, March 03, 2022 (PPI-OT):As chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’ grew louder and shriller, Malika hid her husband in a blanket under the bed before locking the room from outside. But a charged mob of 150 men, carrying rods, spears and guns broke open the door and entered room. As one of them shoved spear in the blanket, Musharraf, who was quiet till then, burst into a shriek. The bloodthirsty mob caught hold of him. They stabbed and hit him against the wall.
He kept crying and begging to be spared, but they showed no mercy. They finally dragged him out into the open and threw him into a raging fire. Then they threw his charred body into the drain.
Malika and her children watched it all from a window. “But we could not do anything,” she recalled the brutal lynching of her husband on Tuesday before an audience of journalists and activists at an event at the Press Club of India organised to mark two years of anti-Muslim carnage that shook parts of the Indian capital in February 2020.
“My children still ask for their father. They stole their father from them. I work as a domestic help to sustain the family now. How will I raise my children now?” she has no answer.
The event organised by civil society groups saw the victims of riots recollect the horrors they lived with and the injustice meted out to them during and in the aftermath of the northeast Delhi riots. Family members of the activists who are languishing in jail on trumped up charges of conspiracy to foment violence also spoke on the occasion.
At least 53 people were killed in the violence, a majority of them Muslim. Fawaz Shaheen, an activist with Quil Foundation, recounted how Muslim homes and businesses were targeted with precision.
Calling it a preplanned violence, Shaheen said it was “micromanaged”. “What happened in Northeast Delhi two years ago was a targeted attack against the Muslim community and the people who led it are elected leaders of the BJP,” he alleged.
“They tried to incite violence at Jamia Millia Islamia, and later at Shaheen Bagh. When they failed to achieve their goal, they tried this in Northeast Delhi. It is no coincidence that the violence broke out after Kapil Mishra gave an incendiary speech. Just to see which community faced the maximum brunt of the violence, eleven masjids and five madrassas were attacked, vandalised and burnt. We won’t believe the lies of the Delhi Police.”
Imrana, another survivor of the violence who also lost her husband, Mudassir, to the communal violence said: “I’ve eight daughters. It is difficult for me to provide for all my children. The government gave us ten lakh rupees as compensation. No amount can ever compensate for the loss of my husband.”
Asif Mujtaba, the founder of Miles2Smile, said shops of Muslims “were burnt while those of Hindus remained unscathed”. “It is important to remember what occurred in northeast Delhi two years ago. The Muslim community was at the receiving end of the violence, but we see that majority of the cases have been registered against Muslims only,” he said.
Another survivor of the carnage, Sameer, who received gunshot wound in the spine, spoke about how the violence left his life “upturned” as his lower body has been paralysed. “I was in class IX at that time. My education has been ruined. My family had to sell our plot in our hometown to pay the hospital bills for my treatment. The government only gave two lakh rupees as compensation. What will I do with it? My life has been ruined. I won’t be able to work and earn for myself.”
The activists also hit out at Delhi Police for allegedly colluding with Hindu rioters during the violence and then running a shoddy investigation implicating the activists who were key organisers of anti-CAA protests that preceded the riots. The police have filed more than 1100 FIRs in the Delhi pogrom.
“Two years on, justice remains elusive. 18 Muslim activists, largely students are falsely framed for instigating violence against their own community. On 26th February 2022, Ishrat Jahan and Khalid Saifi completed two full years in prison, while those who openly exhorted violence against anti-CAA protestors remain at large. Not even an FIR has been registered against them. This raises serious questions on the increasingly Kafkaesque nature of the criminal justice system,” they said.
The activists regretted that two years after the riots, justice remains elusive to the victims. In this context, they cited the case of Faizan, the 23-year-old youth who died hours after being forced by the Delhi Police cops to sing national anthem, along with other injured victims lying on the ground. He was denied medical aid during 36 hours of his detention despite being badly injured.
“None of the policemen involved in the incident have been brought to account for the cold blooded murder,” rued the activists.
Zafarul Islam, former chairman of Delhi Minorities Commission, who chaired the event said, “There should be a proper judicial commission to look into the Delhi violence. There must be an investigation against people like Kapil Mishra, Ragini Tiwari and others who incited the violence. And if we fail to speak on such matters, injustices will keep on happening.”
Vakil, a resident of northeast Delhi who lost vision due to acid attack by a mob inside a mosque in Shiv Vihar area regretted that no “one came to help us”. “Muslims of northeast Delhi feel betrayed. A betrayal that is impossible to reconcile with,” he said.
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