MUZAFFARNAGAR REFLIEF CAMPS
Surviving in the cold shadow of fear
The relief camps for riot-hit Muslims in UP are being shut. But the victims say going back to villages that betrayed their trust to slay and rape their families is not an option.
By Aditi Tandon

It is a challenge for 10-year-old Adil to keep himself warm at Malakpur relief camp, the largest in Shamli district, where 33 children have died of cold. Tribune Photos: Mukesh Aggarwal Victims of rape from Jogya Kheri village in Fugana area of Muzaffarnagar. FIRs have been registered, but no action taken. For the children, there is little food and no schools.

Seventy-year-old Haji Islam from Muzaffarnagar’s Phugana village will never forget the morning of September 8, 2013. That morning changed the course of his life and that of his fellow Muslims who once lived harmoniously with the Hindu Jats in the now-polarised swathes of Western Uttar Pradesh.

Today even his next generations refuse to enter the village he once called home. They say they would die on the roadside but never go back.

Ask them what keeps them from returning home and they unravel stories of horror unheard of in this part of the state which remained peaceful even during the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition and the 2002 Gujarat riots.

It’s a story of human brutalisation and displacement triggered by a strange turn of events that built up around August and lasted until September-end this year.

By then, around 50 people had lost their lives in the unprecedented Muslim-Jat clashes that rocked Shamli, Muzaffarnagar and Bhagpat districts of Western UP starting September 7 and 8.

Over 50,000 Muslims remain displaced after they fled their homes to escape the communal fire and seek shelter in around 30 relief camps. Official records, however, put this number at 4,783, though a ground visits tell a different story.

MINOR ALTERCATION

It all started on August 27 when three young men (one Muslim and two Jats) were killed in Kawal Nagar village of Muzaffarnagar following an altercation over a motorbike’s collision with a bicycle. The three were Shahnawaz Qureishi, Gaurav and Sachin.

Though the FIR lodged by the two sides at Sikheda police station in the area mentions a brawl and revenge clashes as the cause behind the killings, the news that went around sowed the first seeds of communal hatred.

Naseem Ahmed, 40, a riot victim from the Jat-dominated Phugana village which stands abandoned by Muslims, recalls, “Canards went around that Shahnawaz had teased the Jat girls and when their relatives Sachin and Gaurav intervened, the Muslims killed them. A hate video surfaced, falsely attributing the killing of two men to a Muslim mob. That triggered the violence.”

Another strange thing is the conflicting statements from the families of the dead men whom The Tribune met in the villages recently. While Mohd Salim, 65, Shahnawaz’s father, reiterated the road-rage story, Kishanlal, Sachin’s father, spoke of eve-teasing, though his daughter told TNS that she had never seen Shahnawaz until his photo appeared in the newspapers following his death.

Inquiries reveal that tension began to simmer in the area on August 30 and 31 when politicians of all hues made provocative speeches in public and fanned communal fires. Among them were BJP MLAs Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana; BSP MP from Muzaffarnagar Qadir Rana and MLA Noor Salim Rana; SP leader Rashid Siddiqui and Congress’ Saeedujjama.

The final trigger was the “Bahu Beti Bachao Maha Panchayat” which Jat leaders called in Kawal on September 7 despite prohibitory orders in the area, which the police failed to enforce. A call to arms was given, the fake video played and passions inflamed.

Subsequent probes revealed that the video, uploaded by Sangeet Som, was fake and not even shot in India. By then the violence had spread too far.

THEY CAME SHOUTING SLOGANS

Haji Islam, whose house in Phugana was torched and daughter-in-law raped allegedly by Jat men, recalls, “It was the Kawal Mahapanchayat that turned Jats on us. They came back in hordes, shouting slogans like ‘Musalmanon ka ek hi sthan… Pakistan ya kabristan’ [Muslims belong either in Pakistan or the graveyard]. Our relatives who in Kawal called us on September 7 night told us to escape. When we were about to leave, the village sarpanch and some Jats we knew for years came to reassure us and asked us to stay. The next day, these very men returned to our houses with weapons to plunder, torch and rape.”

Islam’s daughter-in-law Shabnam, a mother of seven, was sexually assaulted on the morning of September 8. She could not escape with the rest of the family which ran to the terrace and stayed there until the Army rescued them later. “I was washing clothes and could not hear the panic. We are a family of 20. Everyone ran for their lives after the Jats attacked. I was left alone.”

Shabnam’s is one of the six rape FIRs lodged in different police stations across Muzaffarnagar, though several Muslim women have claimed sexual assault.

Now sheltered in the Muslim dominated Jogiya Khera village, 2 km from Phugana, Shabnam rules out returning home. “We were robbed by the very people we served for years. It is inexplicably painful to see your own turn against you. They misled us so we didn’t escape. How are we to trust them ever again?” she asks.

Close to 2,000 Muslims of Phugana (whose total population is 25,000) fled their village on September 8 with women scurrying through sugarcane fields to run to safety. None of the Muslim dominated villages were touched. Riot hit villages were the ones where minorities lived in pockets and were easily identifiable.

That explains why all relief camps in the post-riot period came up in Muslims majority areas.

IN THE CAMPS

Stories of denial abound in the 30 relief camps dotting Western UP. Around 15 each are still in operation in the riot affected Shamli and Muzaffarnagar districts with the inhabitants battling a harsh winter, trauma and administrative neglect.

At the Malakpur relief camp, the largest in Shamli district, 33 children have died of cold and 40 women are in the last stages of pregnancy with no medical help at hand. Around 10 children have been born in the camp since it came up.

Najma, who was expecting when the riots broke out in Lank village, says, “I ran despite my condition. We walked 20 km before our relatives got vehicles to rescue us. Finally we camped here even as the managers were still removing kikar trees from the land. First we slept on the ground. I delivered in a nearby hospital on September 10. My child is very weak, so am I.”

Mothers of children who succumbed to cold and subsequent pneumonia and lack of medical attention remain inconsolable. Among them is Dilshana who lost her five-month-old boy and Mumtaz who lost a 12-day-old daughter. “We have lost our homes, honour, children in these riots. But our trauma is far from over. We still hear of Jats dragging away Muslims who attempted to return. We have no such intention.”

Families after families in relief camps repeat the same story. From Malakpur camp in Shamli district which came up on forestland to Loi and Jola village relief camps in Muzaffarnagar district, Muslim men and women are living under the cloud of fear having watched the hacking of their kin and rape of their daughters.

“I will die in this camp but not go back. We don’t want to be killed,” says Maksudi, an 80-year-old widow who fled from Mohammad Raising village with her five sons and is now in Jola camp.

The UP Government has declared nine villages of the area riot affected and is offering Rs 5 lakh compensation to the inhabitant families. The claimants describe the amount as a pittance. Everyone’s home and hearth was worth lakhs and a trade-off for Rs 5 lakh looks cheap to them. Half of the claimants have so far got the money.

RELIEF AND AGONY

For Muslims who are too afraid to return, the future remains bleak. Many who have accepted Rs 5 lakh in lieu of torched houses are now repenting. As Sadeen Khan, 75, residing in Kandhla relief camp (Shamli) points out: “In return for the money, the state is making us sign vague affidavits which take away our right to ever return home.”

A copy of the affidavit which The Tribune accessed says, “Once you have accepted Rs 5 lakh as damages for the property, you will never return to the village or stake claim over your property.” The condition, which Muslims protested, is reported to have been relaxed but the community fears the government is cheating them of their rightful claims.

“What can anyone do with Rs 5 lakh? Just our belongings were worth that much,” says Farzana, a victim, now lodged in the house of her Muslim relatives in Jogiya Khera village, the only village which sheltered refugees in homes after winding up the relief camp.

“We could not see children dying of cold. So the panchayat decided to close the relief camp as winters approached. Now around 900 people are living with us in our houses. We will shelter them till they get a roof,” Iqbal Pradhan, sarpanch of Jogiya Khera, says.

In another heartening initiative, this village has collected Rs 1 lakh from all households and distributed among to the refugees besides vacating part of their land for NGO Anhad, which is going to open an informal school for the children.

Zulfu Pradhan, brother of Iqbal Pradhan, instrumental in the move, pays from his pocket to get children treated in nearby hospitals. Due to unhygienic conditions in camps, children are suffering not just from cold but various skin ailments, dysentery and diarrhoea.

The little help the state government was sending in the form of milk and ration stopped after October 1, with Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and his father and SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav repeatedly mocking those inhabiting the camps.

The Muslims are extremely hurt with two recent statements of these two leaders — Mulayam’s “Only BJP and Congress men are in the camps” jibe and his son’s remarks that blankets for Muzaffarnagar riot victims were being collected from Gurgaon’s upmarket Ambience Mall.

Though the government has remained in denial about the extent of displacement and deaths of children (they have admitted to 34 deaths), the Supreme Court has hauled them up for neglect on a petition which Anhad filed highlighting the plight of Muslims.

Shabnam Hashmi of Anhad is also helping Western UP’s rape victims get justice, having engaged SC lawyer Vrinda Grover, who is preparing the case for six rape victims and helping another gang-rape victim from Lank get her FIR registered.

Despite changes in the anti-rape laws which mandate the police to book the crime or face a jail term, the UP police remains slack with the investigating officer in rape cases progressing very slowly.

“We will plead the SC to move the cases out of UP,” says Naseem Ahmed of Phugana, the complainant in all six rape FIRs and most of the 109 FIRs of murder and arson registered post riots. No arrests have been made, but Naseem himself has been embroiled in eight cross-cases.

LOST CHILDHOODS

The topmost humanitarian crisis in riot-hit UP involves children, who are staring at bleak futures, having been uprooted from their home and schools. In Malakpur camp alone, 965 children up to eight years of age are hoping to get back to education.

Many like Aas Mohd miss their Jat friends in the village school. “We were all friends but we don’t know why the Hindus killed us. I wish for the old times to return,” says the innocent 13-year-old, whose routine at the camp involves attending a school run by the Madrassa Board in the camp.

Manager of the camp Dilshad Haji says, “We have engaged local Maulanas to keep the children’s education going. We are doing whatever we can, considering there’s no help from the state.”

At the camp, children attend two classes – younger ones learn Urdu and the older ones learn to study the Holy Quran. But modern education remains far from their reach as Aamir Khan of Anhad points out: “Religious education is part of the relief efforts by the community. Most camps are being managed by Muslim organisations which are helping financially. Naturally, religious education will come as part of the package. But we are now starting an informal school in Jogiya Khera where we will engage two teachers.”

On the ground, several NGOs like Astitiva, Oxfam and Uday Foundation are working to provide whatever relief is possible, but some camps in the interiors remain unfed.