Saamb Mohan for Twocircles.net
It was the spring settling in India’s capital. On February 23, 2020, around 3 pm, a politician appears at Maujpur Chowk, a four-way on Delhi’s Seelampur. The politician was once an MLA. He went on the record in Delhi assembly, and furiously raised the matter of Amit Shah and Narendra Modi, at the time of their Gujarat regime (the same when a series of fake encounters and Gujarat pogrom surfaced), allegedly using state machinery for snooping over a woman. The woman was rumored to be Narendra Modi’s girlfriend. The politician was attacking Gujarati duo. And only three BJP legislators were not able to counter the politician related to AAP.
But on Feb 23, this man was way opposite to his previous lines. He was openly targeting Muslims, who staged a similar protest like that of Shaheen Bagh in the Chandbagh area. He asked Hindus to unite. He threatened in front of a DCP of Delhi police. He said that he wouldn’t listen to the police. And he left, and in just a few minutes a mob entered in Delhi’s several areas. They burnt houses. They pelted stones. They threw Molotov cocktails. They fired shots. Delhi police, who worked under Union Home Ministry headed by Amit Shah, spotted accompanying rioters attacking houses of Muslims. The politician was Kapil Mishra, a AAP turncoat politician who is now in BJP.
By the time this story is being written for our readers, officially 45 people have lost their lives. Not just Muslims, several Hindus, and several law officers have lost their lives, their houses, shops, and their loved ones.
Such is the case of Mohammad Anwar (58). Anwar used to deal with goats. While violence broke out on February 23, Anwar was in his shop-cum-home at Shiv Vihar, trading as usual. I met his brother Saleem at Mortuary of Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital filled with those who lost their loved ones in Delhi riots. He told the story further. “But just after two days, on February 25, around 400-500 men, related to RSS, came to our house. They were not from around our locality. But I could recognize a couple of them. Most of our family members flew the house seeing the tense condition for the last couple of days. But Anwar was there,” recalls Saleem.
“It was between 9-10 am that day. The mob came directly into our house. They torched the house. Some of them looted the goats, several goats were burnt or maybe they set them free. Anwar ran. They fired a bullet in his leg. He immediately fell down. They started beating him. He stood up and tried to walk away. This was Anwar’s end. They again fired shots at him. And threw him in the fire,” said Saleem.
Just a small portion Anwar’s right leg has been left. After several difficulties, Saleem could identify his brother with a footmark. Anwar’s family does not know when they will get his remains. And also unsure of what to bury. One of his family members said, “We have to bury something. If not just the leg, then only a Chadar.”
However, the list of those who lost their lives in this pogrom also has one more name — Prem Singh. Nobody knows how Prem Singh lost his life. Nobody witnessed what happened to him. He was a 27-year-old rickshaw puller. Used to live in the Yamuna Vihar area. He left his home around noon on February 25. He never returned home.
I met Prem Singh’s family on February 29 outside GTB’s mortuary. It was the day when the search of Singh’s family ended four days after at the mortuary. They couldn’t believe when they saw Prem Singh in the mortuary. “Yes. It was Bhaiya,” said Savita Devi, the younger sister of Prem Singh.
His wife Sunita is 7 months into pregnancy. Also, she has three daughters. And the day Prem vanished, he left home to arrange milk for her daughters. “It was all bad out there. People were running with panic. Nobody knew what to do,” said Sunita while having her daughter on her shoulder and a hand on her belly.
A few hours passed, Prem Singh’s family started to worry about him. A few of his family members went out and searched for him. No clue, they returned back. “We lodged a missing person complaint next day at Dayalpur police station. Even the police had no clue. Some of our friends in the police asked us to come to GTB hospital. I couldn’t understand at first why they were calling us at the mortuary. But soon I got the idea that he could be here. I was praying otherwise. But the mob indeed engulfed him,” said her sister Savita Devi.
Details of postmortem of Prem Singh is yet unknown, as we are working on the story. But for sure, both Prem Singh and Anwar had one thing in common. Both were killed by a mob. Both families said that they were either saved or supported by the individuals of other religions. Anwar’s rest of the family was saved by a Hindu neighbor, while Muslim neighbors provided all possible support and help to Prem Singh’s family.
And the family of both accuse Delhi Police of apathy. How?
When Anwar’s brother Saleem was frantically calling the police the day his brother was attacked, the cops at Karawal Nagar Police Station asked the family to come to the police station and lodge a complaint in person. Saleem said, “If we had gone, we too would have been killed by the mob. We told them that we couldn’t come. But instead of coming to us with force, they kept pushing to do things their way.”
Some members of the Prem Singh family also accused Delhi Police of not showing any interest in lodging a missing person report. “At first, they said that aa jayega, aa jayega. Kahin chhup gaya hoga. Kahin pareshan hoga,” said one family member.
But Delhi police has no reply over one or several accusations raised at it during riots.