WHO FAILED DELHI?

49 DEAD

300 INJURED

122 HOUSES TORCHED

200 CARS BURNT

300 MOTORCYCLES SET ON FIRE

2 SCHOOLS VANDALISED

4 RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS BURNT

4 FACTORIES GUTTED

5 GODOWNS LOOTED

369 FIRS LODGED

903 ARRESTED

The writing had been on the wall. At least on the one-kilometre-long wall that separates the warren of galis from the sewage canal that runs through the Jafrabad area of Northeast Delhi. Nineteen pieces of anti-CAA and anti-NRC graffiti are sprayed on that white facade. But the administration failed to see it. All it took was for someone to fling a stone, and the area erupted in a conflagration that lasted four days beginning February 23. There are enough indications to suggest the riots were not spontaneous. There were Molotov cocktails, stockpiles of stones and handguns. Twenty-two of the 49 victims were shot dead and nearly 200 people sustained gunshot injuries. Yet, all the law enforcement agencies and the political class could do was point fingers at each other even as the current spate of Hindu-Muslim riots became the worst the national capital has seen in 70 years. The question, then, bears repetition: who let Delhi down?

FAILURE #1

WHY WAS THE WARNING THAT NORTHEAST DELHI IS A TINDERBOX IGNORED?

A 62 SQUARE KILOMETRE AREA, off the shoulder of the Yamuna river, Northeast Delhi is the most densely populated district of the country—with 36,155 persons per sq km as against the national average of 420. Threestoreyed concrete houses stand cheek-by-jowl on narrow, three-feet-wide bylanes. Levels of education—as well as of employment—are low, its youth aspiring for nothing more than a motorbike or a mobile phone. A porous border with Uttar Pradesh means criminal gangs shuttle freely between both sides; procuring petrol bombs and country-made guns is not difficult either. The area also has one of the highest concentrations of Muslims in the city—30 per cent as against the average of 13 per cent elsewhere in Delhi. It has a history of both crime and communal riots—there was violence here during the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 as well as after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992. Throw an incendiary communal narrative into this volatile mix, and a conflagration is guaranteed.

Tensions had been building up in the area ever since the BJP-led central government passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, or CAA, on December 9 last year. Hundreds of women had begun their sit-in at Shaheen Bagh, 22 km away, from December 14 onward. Three days later, on December 17, anti-CAA protesters moving to assemble at Seelampur Chowk in Northeast Delhi were stopped by the police, and a clash ensued. The agitated mob pelted stones at the police and damaged vehicles, including a school bus which had a driver and student inside. The police used teargas and led a lathi-charge. Twelve policemen and six civilians were injured. Before long, Northeast Delhi became the Ground Zero of the anti-CAA protests.

The FIR filed on January 14 named Aam Aadmi Party leader Abdul Rehman and ex-Congress MLA Mateen Ahmed for ‘provoking the crowds to join the violence’. Around the same time, BJP leader Kapil Mishra started tweeting videos to his 796K followers of what he claimed were Muslims beating up policemen and frightening young children inside the bus by pelting stones at it. BJP followers then started the hashtag #AlahuAkbar where more videos of alleged Muslim mobs shouting ‘Alahu Akbar’ and throwing petrol bombs started trending. With the Delhi assembly election approaching, the BJP used the events to begin a polarising campaign. Invoking the protest at Shaheen Bagh, BJP leaders said it was causing inconvenience to the city and businesses. The pitch resonated well in Northeast Delhi, home to many Hindu traders, who readily identified with the damage a blocked road could inflict on their livelihood. It worked. Three of the eight seats the BJP won in the assembly election were from Northeast Delhi. Another three came from the East Delhi Lok Sabha constituency next door.

The election over, national attention, indeed that of the Delhi Police, shifted to the impending two-day visit of the American president, Donald Trump. Amid all this, the warning signs—the slow build-up to the violence, the stockpiling of stones, petrol