‘Where will I go?’: Hindu man dead, Muslims in India’s Bahraich face attack

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Bahraich, India – About 10:30am on October 14, Mohammad Kaleem received a frantic call from a friend, urging him to flee with his family.

A day earlier, a 22-year-old Hindu man, Ram Gopal Mishra, was allegedly shot dead by a Muslim man while a Hindu religious procession was passing through the Muslim-dominated neighbourhood of Maharajganj, 5km (3.1 miles) from Kaleem’s home in Kapurpur village in the Bahraich district of the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

Religious processions – of all faiths – have for centuries been a part of India’s diverse social fabric, where different communities have lived cheek by jowl. But in recent years, as Hindu far-right groups have grown increasingly assertive under the rule of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), many processions have taken on a darker hue. Hindu groups now often march through Muslim localities while playing Islamophobic songs on loudspeakers and raising hate-filled slogans.

“This has been happening at every Hindu procession that has passed the village in the last three to four years,” Dawood Ahmed, 32, who owns a shop in Maharajganj, told Al Jazeera.

This year, tensions exploded. A widely shared video on social media purportedly shows Mishra climbing the terrace of a house in Maharajganj, shaking the iron railing on the roof until it broke, and then tearing down a green flag on top of the house and replacing it with a saffron flag. Green flags with Islamic motifs are common on Muslim homes while saffron is a colour often used by right-wing Hindu groups.

Seconds after Mishra hoisted the saffron flag, a bullet pierced his chest and his body fell down on the terrace. According to villagers and Mishra’s relatives, he died of his injuries on the spot — although Mishra’s wife insisted he could have been saved if the police had taken him to hospital faster than they did. The autopsy cited shock and haemorrhage caused by a gunshot wound as the causes of death.

Police charged the house’s owner, Abdul Hameed, 62, who has a jewellery business, and his two sons, Mohammad Sarfaraz, 32 and Mohammad Taleeb, 28, with Mishra’s killing and arrested them On October 17. The next day, a local court ordered five accused, including Hameed and his sons, to remain in judicial custody for 14 days. Sarfaraz is accused of having fired the fatal shot from a rifle that is registered in Hameed’s name.

Meanwhile, Mishra’s killing sparked communal tensions in Bahraich, a district bordering Nepal. On October 14, thousands of outraged Hindus gathered in Maharajganj for Mishra’s last rites. Once done with the rituals, the crowd turned violent and went on a rampage, targeting Muslim properties within a radius of about 10km (6.2 miles), ransacking and burning them down.

Kaleem, 32, was helping others in his village flee and hide in rice fields about the time a mob arrived. Stuck and with nowhere to go, Kaleem hid his wife, Nagma Begum, 28, their four-year-old son, six-month-old daughter and himself in jute bags under the two cots in their bedroom.

The terrified family remained in hiding under their beds for more than an hour as the mob outside screamed, stole their money, flung petrol bombs inside their rooms and lit the gas cylinder in their kitchen to burn down the house. As the gas cylinder began to make oozing noises, the mob fled from the house, fearing it might explode.

As soon as it left, Kaleem hurried out of the jute bag, ran out of the bedroom, picked up the hissing cylinder and flung it into the field behind their house. “I thought we might not survive this,” he told Al Jazeera.

The cylinder had lost much of its gas and didn’t burst. But Bahraich had exploded.

‘Homes could be saved if police acted sooner’

For Kaleem and his elder brother Mohammad Naseem, the attack was a big blow to their livelihoods. The mob had set fire to their motorbikes, which they used to buy vegetables from Bahraich town and sell them in the district’s rural areas.

“I have no land under my name. I am not educated. I have no other means to provide for my family,” said Naseem, who had bought his motorbike only eight months ago for 86,000 rupees ($1,023) after taking out a loan of 50,000 rupees ($594) for it.

Naseem wants to relocate to a different village. “I want to leave with my family. But I have no money. Where will I go?” he asked.

Three wrecked houses away from Kaleem’s, 51-year-old Mangu, who goes by his first name only, leaned over his “sanduka”, a large iron chest, as he sifted through his burned belongings. He took out a small steel box from the charred chest containing crisped, burned cash that he had put away for emergencies.

He then took out a brass “lota”, a globular water pitcher, and a few copper plates that he was given as a gift during his marriage 30 years ago. Burned pieces of paper also lay in the chest, which Mangu said were his daughter’s 10th grade mark sheets and school transfer certificate that he thought he had safely stored.

Mangu told Al Jazeera he had nothing left. “These clothes that I am wearing are all I have now,” he said, pointing to his chequered white shirt and brown trousers.

Multiple residents of Kapurpur told Al Jazeera the police arrived about an hour and a half after the mob stormed the village.

“It appeared that the police had given the mob a free pass to attack and loot,” said a man who requested anonymity due to fears of reprisal from the BJP-led government in Uttar Pradesh.

The residents of Kapurpur said that if the police had acted sooner, their homes would have been saved. Local police officers declined to comment on the matter.

On Tuesday, a mainstream Hindi-language newspaper conducted an undercover operation in which two Hindu men confessed on camera that they were involved in the rioting on October 14.

“Some people betrayed us; otherwise, all of Maharajganj would have been wiped out. The police had given us two hours,” one of them explained. The other man then said, “That is why all the policemen had left.” A day later, on Wednesday, the police arrested both of them.

Al Jazeera asked Shivesh Shukla, a spokesman for the top police officer in Bahraich, for a response to allegations that police allowed the Hindu mob to loot and vandalise Muslim properties on October 14. He declined to comment. On the specific case highlighted by the newspaper’s undercover operation, he had not responded by the time of publication.

The only unscathed house in Kapurpur was that of Kaleem’s only Hindu neighbour.

Mangu said people are too scared to sleep in their homes, fearing the mob will return and kill them.

“For the past week, all villagers have been sleeping in one house while a dozen police officers keep guard outside. We go to our homes in the morning and come here at night,” he said.

‘Say Oh, Ram instead of Oh, Allah’

An hour before the Hindu mob stormed Kapurpur, Rafiuz Zama, who is disabled below the knees, was returning from neighbouring Ram Purva village to his home in Maharajganj when a mob attacked the village, forcing him to abandon his electronic rickshaw on the road.

“I got away somehow, hiding in an alley. The mob torched my e-rickshaw,” Zama, 30, told Al Jazeera. He said he supported his family of two sons and a daughter, aged three to 11, by ferrying people on his e-rickshaw which he had bought for 170,000 rupees ($2,021) this year. He said he did not know how he would feed his family now.

Two lanes across from where Zama’s e-rickshaw was set on fire, 45-year-old Riyana Bano said she had just turned off the lights and retired to bed after giving medicines to her sick son Mohammad Irfan, 26, on the night of October 14 when she heard a bang on her steel door.

“I thought it was a Hindu mob. They broke down the gate, and I saw 20 to 25 police officers entering my home. They asked me where my son and husband were and once done with their interrogation, pushed me aside,” she told Al Jazeera.

Bano said they beat her husband, Habibullah, 60, with a baton. “I said, ‘Hai, Allah’ [Oh, God.] They [the police officers] verbally abused me and told me to say, ‘Hai, Ram’ rather than Allah,” she said. Ram is a prominent Hindu deity.

Bano said the left side of her husband’s body is partially paralysed and he can barely move. Irfan, their eldest son, lives in Nepal, where he runs a jewellery shop. He had come to Bahraich earlier this month to undergo kidney stone removal surgery.

But police still took him into custody. “He is in a lot of pain and takes medication. How could my son riot if he can’t even pee properly?” Bano asked.

‘Why attack a dead man’s grave?’

Three days after the October 14 violence, police entered Reshma’s house in Maharajganj in the middle of the night. The 45-year-old alleged a policeman slapped her before the police arrested her husband, Mohammad Lateef, 50, and their three sons, Mohammad Rizwan, Mohammad Irfan and Mohammad Gufran, aged 18 to 21.

Reshma said Lateef, who has a heart condition, was freed by the police two days later. “He was beaten first at home and then on the road near the village mosque. He had black marks from his beatings. I massage him to ease his pain. He says he will never forget this beating,” she said.

Rizwan, Irfan and Gufran are still in custody. The eldest two work as daily wage labourers while Gufran works at a hair salon. Reshma said she tried to hire a lawyer to get them freed, but most of them belonged to the Brahmin caste – which sits at the top of Hinduism’s caste hierarchy – and is the caste Mishra came from.

On the outskirts of Maharajganj, nestled between lush green fields, stands the burned two-room house where Reshma Bano, 26, lives with her 64-year-old mother, Saira Bano.

About 11:30am on October 14, about 30 to 40 Hindu men emerged from the fields and attacked the Banos’ home. The two women fled. When they returned hours later, their house was in flames. The mob had destroyed the solar panels on their roofs, damaged the hand pump in the front yard and took about 30,000 rupees ($356) that Reshma Bano had saved for her wedding next year.

“They also attacked my father’s grave, burning the “chaadar” (green sheet) wrapped on top of his grave. Why attack a dead man’s grave?” Reshma Bano asked.

Shakeel Ahmad, a former head of Maharajganj village and a member of Modi’s BJP, told Al Jazeera that Muslims in neighbouring villages, which are dominated by Hindus, specifically the Brahmin community that Mishra belonged to, bore the brunt of the attacks.

He said Muslims who were not involved in the rioting were being arrested in large numbers. “The police have already arrested Hameed and his sons. I don’t understand why they’re arresting other innocent Muslims,” he said.

Police spokesman Shukla told Al Jazeera 99 people have been arrested over the violence without specifying how many of them were Muslims. On allegations by the Muslims that the police action was selective, he said: “This is wrong. We took action against both Hindus and Muslims. This is not one-sided.”

Officials order demolition of Muslim properties

On Monday afternoon, the main street in Maharajganj had a desolate look. The sounds of police vehicles broke the silence. The only other sound: 23-year-old Avesh Raza hammering away at the blue steel door to his Raza Coffee Counter, a small shop that sold coffee and rented out espresso machines for weddings, as he tried to salvage whatever he could from his ransacked business.

On Friday, less than a week after the violence, the government’s Public Works Department issued an order to demolish 23 properties in Maharajganj, 20 of them belonging to Muslims, including Raza’s, alleging they encroached on public land. The three non-Muslim properties belong to Hindus from disadvantaged castes.

The PWD notices asked that owners prove the genuineness of their properties by providing permission obtained from competent authorities by Sunday or face demolition.

“How is this fair?” a distraught Raza asked as he kept beating on the door to break it open.

The demolition notices were also placed on Hameed’s house and a few other Muslim properties near it. Authorities claimed that extensions of these houses were encroaching on the road, but at least six homes belonging to Hindus that, according to the residents, also protruded onto the street had not received notices.

Shopkeeper Dawood, who has also received a demolition notice, claims the government action is one-sided. “This is nothing but collective punishment for Muslims. One person [may have] committed a crime, and now all Muslims must face punishment,” he said.

On Sunday, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court stayed the PWD action, giving the affected individuals 15 days to respond to the notices served to them. Most of the residents said they were unable to meet the deadline because they were either in jail or had fled their homes over fear of arrests.

Meanwhile, India’s Supreme Court in New Delhi, while hearing a plea filed by Hameed’s lawyer challenging the demolition of his house, on Tuesday directed the Uttar Pradesh government to not go ahead with the action in Bahraich. Last month, the top court issued an order staying any demolition of properties of people accused of a crime, calling them “illegal”. The order, however, added that it did not apply to properties encroaching on public land or those abutting bodies of water or railway lines.

‘Fake encounter to appease Hindus’

On October 17, police in Bahraich said they shot and injured Hameed’s son Sarfaraz and another accused in Mishra’s murder as the two allegedly tried to flee to Nepal.

Hameed’s lawyer Mohammad Kalim Hashmi told Al Jazeera that his client’s life was in danger and it was a “fake encounter”, a term commonly used in India to explain the extrajudicial killings of people in police custody.

“The family was not told where they were being taken. We sent a letter complaining that they might be fake-encountered. Then a video surfaced of his [Hameed’s] daughter inquiring the whereabouts of her father and brother, and it wasn’t until it went viral that the police revealed they were shot in an encounter,” he said.

Meanwhile, some mainstream news outlets started reporting that Mishra was “brutally tortured” before he was shot dead. A prominent anchor for a top Hindi news channel alleged on his show that Mishra’s toenails were pulled out and he was attacked with a sharp object on his head and given electric shocks before his death.

Police in Bahraich later posted on X that reports of nail-pulling and electric shocks were fake and intended to disrupt communal harmony.

Mishra’s widow, Roli Mishra, 19, told Al Jazeera the police were responsible for his death. The couple had married only four months ago.

“My husband was shot. My brother-in-law begged the cops to take him to a hospital. The police did not help nor did they assist us in retrieving his body. They finally took him to the hospital in an e-rickshaw,” she said.

Police spokesman Shukla declined to comment on Roli Mishra’s allegations.

Ram Gopal Mishra belonged to a poor farming family in Rehuwa Mansoor village, about 9km (5.9 miles) from Maharajganj. Roli Mishra said her husband graduated from college in 2021 and had been unemployed for two years before he joined his cousin’s catering business recently.

Roli Mishra said she had no knowledge of her husband belonging to any far-right Hindu group.

She said he was in a nearby temple making “prasad”, food offerings for the gods, when he saw the Ram Navmi procession passing through his village on the afternoon of October 13 and decided to join it. Locals said he was encouraged by the crowd in the procession to climb on top of Hameed’s home on October 13.

Roli Mishra said his last words to her were: “You should have your dinner as I am going to join the procession and would come back home late.” He never did.

‘Break Muslims financially’

On October 15, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath met with the Mishra family and promised them compensation of 1 million rupees ($12,500), a new house and a government job for Roli Mishra.

But many Muslims are asking why they are not being compensated for the destruction of their properties.

Aasif Mujtaba runs Miles2Smile, a New Delhi-based NGO that works with survivors of religious violence, mob lynchings and punitive demolitions. He told Al Jazeera the government’s response to incidents of communal violence in India is biased.

“Mishra climbed over a Muslim man’s house, removed an Islamic flag, had criminal intentions and was attempting to incite a riot. His actions were responsible for the communal violence. The chief minister of the state is meeting and financially compensating the family of a person who should have a criminal case against him,” he said.

On the other side, Mujtaba added, more than 50 Muslim homes and properties were burned down due to the government’s negligence. “Why were they not being compensated?” he asked.

Mujtaba said there was an economic aspect to the Bahraich violence.

“The Muslims in Maharajganj were doing well financially. This was the only large market in the area. That is why their businesses and houses were attacked. They want to break Muslims financially as well,” he said.

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