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AlFallah Nagar is a resettlement colony of Muslim refugees on the outskirts of Population
Modasa town in Gujarat’s Sabarkantha district bordering Rajasthan. It is one of five
resettlement colonies that have come up in the town after the wave of Poverty
unprecedented violence that swept through the state in 2002. Modasa too
witnessed violence and arson that led to five deaths in police firing. But there hasn’t Right to Information
been a major flare up since then, perhaps because the two communities have kept
to themselves. “This town is about 700 years old and it has always been this way. Trade & Development
Muslims live on one side of the main road, Hindus on the other. Each keeps to his
area,” Gujarat Amir (president) of the JamaatiIslami Muhammed Shafi Madni says. Technology
The town’s BJP MLA since 1995 Dilipsinh Parmar concurs: “Muslims vote for
Congress, Hindus vote for us.” Urban India
A modest, singlestorey bungalow at AlFallah Nagar, freshly painted in various MDG 2015
shades of green, stands out, hinting at the social status of its owner. Salimbhai
Sindhi is former sarpanch and chairman of a local dairy cooperative from Kidiyad, Videos
an interior village around 25 km from Modasa, in Malpur subdivision of the district.
“Out of the 550odd families in the five resettlement colonies in Modasa, 51 families Social Studies
are from Kidiyad. We are the largest group of refugees in the region, allotted
houses at AlFallah Nagar in 2004,” Salimbhai says. “Before the houses were built,
we spent nearly two years in makeshift camps in the nearby open fields after fleeing Newsletter
our village.”
Name
Makeshift camps for Muslims displaced in 2002 dot the region Modasa and
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Khedbrahma in north Gujarat, Dahod, Lunawada, Godhra and ChottaUdepur in Email
central Gujarat as also other places in the state. An official report by a senior
police official to the state home department in August 2002 says: “An estimate
Subscribe
about communal riots victims migrated from various districts indicates that over
75,500 persons from 13 districts have been shifted to other places… During the
communal riots, 10,472 houses, 12,588 shops, 2,724 larri/galas (handcarts) were
damaged or destroyed due to arson, while 1,333 shops were ransacked.”
Syndicate
The Gujarat riots broke out on February 27, 2002, when a Muslim mob in Godhra
town set alight a train coach carrying Hindu pilgrims on their way back from
Ayodhya. The incident, which claimed 59 lives including women and children,
sparked three weeks of murderous reprisals by rightwing Hindu mobs, followed by
lowintensity violence that left over 1,000 people dead across Gujarat. In 2009, Add this page to your
seven years later, 228 ‘missing’ people were declared dead, pushing the official favorite Social Bookmarking
death toll to 1,180. websites
Independent activists and academicians maintain, however, that the toll is closer to
2,000 and the number of displaced nearly 1.5 lakh, with over 900 villages and 150
towns in 19 of the state’s 25 districts affected by the riots. Communalism Comb at
and Citizens for Justice and Peace have noted, in a 2003 petition to the Gujarat
High Court that the number of relief camps in the state of Gujarat during the peak of
the riots was 121, out of which 58 were in Ahmedabad city alone. These relief
camps accommodated 132,532 persons, the petitioners say.
The survivors continue to live in camps seeking safety in numbers
A majority of the survivors continue to live in camps seeking safety in numbers.
Even today they refuse to go back to their homes. “Ninetyfive per cent of (displaced)
Muslims do not want to go back to their villages or localities. They prefer the security
offered by a Muslim ghetto like Juhapura in Ahmedabad,” observes social
anthropologist Dipankar Gupta, who spent 2009 studying how victims of ethnic
violence gradually reestablish themselves, although rarely ever regaining what they
had in the past.
For the displaced from Kidiyad, the 2002 ordeal is still fresh in their minds. On
March 2, Salimbhai and other elders from the village decided to move to a secure
place when news of arson and killings started pouring in from nearby villages.
“There was no help forthcoming from the police. To ensure the safety of women,
children and the elderly, we packed around 120 of them in two tempos, escorted by
some young men,” he recalls. Among those fleeing were Salimbhai, his wife, and
15yearold son. The trucks had travelled only a short distance from the village
when they were stoned and stopped by mobs that lynched and burnt 73 people.
Salimbhai remembers how another group of around 100 Muslims hid themselves
in the wheat fields near Kidiyad during the night, and trekked seven kilometres to
reach the taluka headquarters in Malpur. One of them, elderly Subbumiya, was
tracked down and killed by the mob as he was too weak to endure the trek and was
left hiding in the fields. “The total casualties from Kidiyad were 74, but the police
could recover only 12 dead bodies. There is no evidence to this day of 62 persons
who were either killed or burnt in such a way as to leave no sign of their dead
bodies,” Salimbhai says.
In Kidiyad, all that remains of the Muslim homes are the damaged red brickand
mud walls. Salimbhai says: “How can we go back when the killers of my wife and
son are still roaming in the village? Is there anyone in my village who will help us
find the killers of so many innocents? Some of the bodies were so badly burnt,
nothing was left. You could not make out if this was a child or a man or a woman.”
The residents of AlFallah Nagar say they are learning to live with this nightmare,
even while complaining of a lack of basic facilities like potable water, sanitation,
electricity, an approach road, and the absence of health and education facilities in
their new colony. “We are living in barely human conditions… as if marooned,”
Aminaben Sindhi, an elderly woman, says. The men complain about work. Most of
them, once fairly welloff cattle dealers, agriculturists, traders and transporters who
used to employ others for unskilled jobs, are now reduced to working as trainee
masons or carpenters for paltry daily wages. Some of them have opened makeshift
snack stalls or paan shops; others work as drivers.
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For the first time since 2002, 10 men with sizeable holdings have moved back to
Kidiyad to till their lands this agricultural season, pitching tents, along with police
escorts, near their destroyed homes. But most of the other men say they are better
off living on the paltry daily wages they earn in Modasa. “We have either sold off our
land in Kidiyad or have given it on lease to our Hindu neighbours who have
remained friendly with us. They share the annual produce with us, and we are fine
with it. We go there once in a while, but return before nightfall,” Zakirmiya Sindhi
says.
Islami Relief Committee (IRC) local organiser and state finance secretary Aminbhai
Seth says he tried hard to persuade displaced families from Kidiyad to return to
their lands. “The land in Modasa on which they have been resettled is owned by the
IRC, though a few welloff like Salimbhai have bought their own plots and built
private houses adjoining the resettlement colonies. But, for the majority, the
alternative homes provided by us, measuring 24 feet x 12 feet, cannot be a
permanent solution. The resettlement camps across Gujarat remain makeshift
camps, except for concrete structures replacing the tarpaulin tents. The ownership
rests with the relief agencies,” he says.
Makeshift camps run by Muslim religious organisations that have been involved in
relief and rehabilitation since the early days of the riots have been transformed into
permanent resettlement sites in most places in Gujarat. Members of the National
Commission for Minorities (NCM), who visited 17 of the 81 camp sites across the
state in 2007, have reported that over 5,000 Muslim families displaced by the 2002
riots are still living in the camps “in subhuman conditions without the most basic
facilities”.
Gujarat government refuses to acknowledge the refugee camps
Referring to suggestions from certain quarters of society that Muslims in Gujarat
should forgive and forget and get back to normal living, the social anthropologist
argues: “This is easier said than done. The victims of ethnic violence, and I have
known them since the 1984 antiSikh riots, strongly feel there can be no peace
without justice.” Gupta has found, in the course of his yearlong research, that
Muslims in Gujarat, unlike Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 or Muslims in Mumbai during
199293, find themselves without any support.
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In Ahmedabad, the JamaatiIslami and the JamaatiUlemaiHind estimate that
roughly a quarter of Muslims who took shelter in various refugee camps were too
scared to go back to where they lived earlier and have been provided alternative
housing. Most of them now live on the outskirts of the city in four pockets
Juhapura, Ramol, Vatva and Dani Limda. “There are 15 such resettlement colonies
in Ahmedabad housing some 725 households, but the municipal authorities refuse
to even have a look,” Seth says.
A major concern of the displaced is that the allotment of houses in the resettlement
colonies has no legal basis. “We are told that as refugees of communal violence
we can live in these houses as long as we please, but there will be no ownership
papers,” says a resident of Citizen Nagar in Ahmedabad. An officebearer of
JamaatiUlemaiHind defended the decision saying the ownership rights were
held back as a precaution against the possibility of ‘pucca houses’ being sublet or
sold outright.
A visit to a resettlement colony in Ahmedabad reveals the dreadful condition of the
socalled ‘pucca’ houses that are singleroom tenements. There are telltale signs
of water seepage through the low roofs during the monsoons. The electrical wiring
is of poor quality and unsafe; there is no ventilation, no internal water taps, and no
drainage system. The rubbish flows outside, and waterlogging is common along
what passes for internal roads. The plight of the people living here is further
worsened by the fact that the government has failed to build schools, health clinics,
and provide for civic transportation.
Added to this are reported attempts by some Muslim groups to force people
towards religious conservatism, stirring up discontent inside the colonies. Tehelka
magazine reported in its December 5, 2009 issue a few of the unyielding conditions
imposed by religious conservatives coming from as far as the United Kingdom: no
television sets, no music, no computers, women to don the hijab and observe
purdah, men to adopt Islamic garb by sporting a beard, wearing a skull cap,
dressing in traditional tunic and pyjamas, saying prayers five times a day, and
compulsorily attending religious camps.
In their study titled ‘The Displaced of Ahmedabad’, researchers Neera Chandhoke,
Praveen Priyadarshi and their coauthors say: “It is clear that for the present
government these families just do not form an integral part of Gujarati society and
politics; they have been expelled both spatially and socially to the margins of the
city… And it is here, in these barren spaces, that the victims of the carnage in
Ahmedabad have been settled, and are expected to begin their life anew, amidst
even more deprivation than they faced in their original habitats.”
The study adds: “Not only are most resettlement colonies remotely located from the
city where jobs are to be found, they are far away from schools and health clinics…
The legal status of the land upon which these shanty towns have been constructed
is contested, because much of it is agricultural land. This has instilled dread
among the residents that they still live in temporary settlements, which can be
easily mowed down by the bulldozers of the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation
(AMC).”
Gujaratbased NGOs like Sahr Waru and the Centre for Social Justice, in a 2009
submission titled ‘The Marginalised Status of Muslims in Gujarat’, say: “Muslims in
Gujarat continue to endure the lasting results of the pogroms in the form of
ghettoised living conditions… They also suffer unemployment, severely restricted
access to schools, and social/cultural ostracism… It is estimated that in the
refugee colonies, 70% of the residents lost their previous employment and 40% of
these remained unemployed as of 2005.”
Ahmedabadbased trade unionist Mukul Sinha, who has been at the forefront of the
struggle for justice in Gujarat, under the banner of the Jan Sangharsh Manch, also
feels there is little hope, with the state continuing to target victims of 2002 as was
evident in the Chandola Talab demolition case recently. He was referring to Muslim
families displaced from Bengali Vas in Ahmedabad’s Chandola Talab area in
2002.
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The displaced have not been adequately compensated by the state
The displaced families have till date not been adequately compensated by the state
government for the seven deaths that took place and houses that were burnt; nor
have any rehabilitation measures been taken despite repeated directions from the
National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). The houses built by voluntary
agencies on an emergency basis some 300odd dwellings were never
regularised and were finally demolished along with a madrasa and a school, by the
municipal authorities on the morning of November 3, 2009. The entire colony was
razed to the ground leaving more than 1,800 people without a roof over their heads,
despite the fact that almost all of the displaced families had valid voter IDs, ration
cards and electricity connections, and hold a domicile of Gujarat.
Several representations to this effect have been made to the central as well as state
authorities, claims Yusuf Sheikh, convenor of the Antrik Visthapit Hak Rakshak
Samiti, which also moved the Gujarat High Court resulting in notices being issued
to the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and the Gujarat police on November 25,
2009. “It is inhuman that the poor riot victims are being further targeted and
victimised by the whimsical and unfair Gujarat government,” Sheikh says.
While riot victims elsewhere are fighting their own battles with aid from NGOs,
approaching governments from the village level to central level, and courts of law
from the local courts to the Supreme Court, for the survivors of Kidiyad there is only
a mysterious silence at all levels of government on those missing since the riots.
The survivors continue to live in the hope that justice will be done some day,
although the seven years required to declare missing persons officially dead have
passed.
Panchmahals district officials maintain they have no clue how people went missing
from Kidiyad; the village did not fall under its jurisdiction. The Sabarkantha district
police confirm that some people from Kidiyad, which does fall in its jurisdiction,
were stopped and killed by a mob at Limbadiya chokdi (crossroads). This was
during the initial phase of the violence, when people were travelling in tempos. But
the spot where the incident took place was in Panchmahals district.
“We were 224 Muslims in Kidiyad that day. Some 20 were guests visiting us for
Friday prayers. I had organised two tempos. Some people stayed back, hiding in
the wheat fields,” Salimbhai recalls. Thirtyfour people set off in the first tempo at 4
pm, speeding towards the GodhraModasa highway. Salimbhai was in this tempo
driven by Zakirbhai Shamsuddin Sindhi. They hoped to make the hour’s drive to the
subdivisional headquarters in Malpur before dusk.
At Limbadiya chokdi, they encountered a large mob blocking the highway to Malpur.
So they turned in the opposite direction and sped towards Khanpur. But they ran out
of luck at Sampadia village where huge boulders had been placed across the road.
The tempo came to a halt and people jumped off trying to flee. Fiftyyearold
Mehmood Dalubhai Sindhi, his wife Abedaben, 45, and Jamilaben Sindhi, 35,
Salimbhai’s wife, were cornered and attacked with sharp weapons. Zakirbhai was
also attacked as he tried to escape from the driver’s cabin with his fourmonthold
son, Mohsin. In the ensuing melee, Mohsin fell from his hands and died. Six were
killed while 28 managed to flee the mob fury at Sampadia. The survivors sheltered
inside a dargah at nearby Kaaranta village for 10 days before they moved to the
Modasa camp.
The second tempo left Kidiyad within a few minutes of the first. Some men from the
mob, on motorcycles, intercepted them at Limbadiya chokdi, firing and flattening the
tempo’s tyres. Armed men surrounded the vehicle. Some of the attackers climbed
into the carriage and hacked the women and children with swords and sickles. It
was a mass slaughter. They then emptied cans of petrol and kerosene and threw
burning tyres to set the tempo on fire. Those who managed to escape were chased
and fired upon. The wounded were thrown into the burning tempo. Sixtyseven
people perished in the fire at Limbadiya chokdi; only 17 managed to escape the
mob fury and reached the nearby Virpur town late at night. The tempo was left to
burn for nearly two days, until the army jawans arrived and doused the fire.
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Limbadiya chokdi and Sampadia where rampaging mobs waylaid the two
tempos and killed their people in the hope of gathering some evidence. Family
albums and halfburnt photos retrieved from destroyed homes are the only
reminders that their people existed.
Aminaben Sindhi, the oldest survivor in the Modasa camp, regrets they could not
even give their people a proper burial. “Marne ka gham to hai, usse zyada to yeh
gham hai ki ham unko theek se dafna nahin sake (We are pained by their death,
but are more upset because we could not give them a decent burial).”
“The high court gave us hope that the doors of justice are not slammed on us,”
Ayubmiya, a witness in the case, says. But it took another four years for the police to
execute more arrests in the case. In April 2008, eight suspects were arrested and
booked under Section 302 (murder) and 307 (attempt to murder) of the IPC, after
eyewitnesses identified them in a parade conducted at a “neutral venue” in Modasa.
They were let off on bail by the high court three months later, Ayubmiya recalls.
Salimbhai says that the law courts are their last hope. “With 62 deaths yet to be
confirmed, so many survivors are still awaiting compensation for the loss of their
near and dear ones.”
Kidiyad’s survivors are tired of it all now. “The legal delays and pending
compensation are important issues, fine. But will we ever know what happened to
our families?” Ayubmiya wants to know. “If they can at least tell us where the
accused buried or dispersed the ashes taken from the burnt tempos…”
“The amount of compensation will be Rs 10,000 if the extent of disablement is
beyond 40%, and in case of permanent disablement the extent of compensation
will be Rs 50,000… The heirs of the deceased were to get Rs 150,000, which
would again be divided into two parts… the value of a person’s life, in the state’s
view, apparently, was reduced to Rs 90,000, to be given in cash, and Rs 60,000, to
be given after a period of about five years by way of government bonds… Similarly,
the amount of compensation for loss of business properties was Rs 5,000 in case
of fixed assets and Rs 10,000 in case of destruction of vehicle,” the petition says.
The Gujarat government claims it has offered adequate compensation and that out
of 977 deaths reported in 2002, exgratia death relief was paid in 758 cases; that,
as of June 2002, Rs 7.62 crore was disbursed in 4,954 cases (2,023 in urban
areas and 2,931 in rural areas) for completely destroyed residential houses, while
Rs 15.55 crore was disbursed in 18,294 cases (11,199 in urban areas and 7,095 in
rural areas) for partial damage.
In May 2008, the central government announced its own Rs 3.3 billion relief
package for survivors and families of those killed in the Gujarat riots, describing it
as compensation in addition to what the state government had already given to the
riot victims earlier. Under the package, the families of those who died in the riots
were to get Rs 350,000, while each of the 2,540 wounded would get Rs 150,000.
Earlier, in March 2008, the Supreme Court initiated a reinvestigation into 10 major
cases of the 2002 riots by forming a fivemember Special Investigative Team (SIT).
The 10 cases relate to rioting in seven places, including Godhra, where 81 people
were killed, Gulbarga Society, where 68 people were killed, Naroda Patiya, where
over 100 people were killed, Sardarpur, where 34 people were killed, and Best
Bakery, where 14 people were burnt alive. The court indicated its intention of
constituting the SIT during the hearing of a petition filed by the NHRC that wants
trials in the riots cases shifted out of Gujarat and reinvestigation carried out by an
independent agency like the CBI.
The NHRC filed the petition after several witnesses turned hostile amid allegations
of threat, coercion and inducement to derail the investigations. The court said the
SIT would act as a nodal agency to decide which witnesses in the case should be
given protection and relocated. The apex court also gave powers to the SIT to
recommend cancellation of bail if considered necessary in any of the cases.
Ayubmiya, who drove one of the tempos on that fateful day in March 2002, and is an
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important eyewitness (along with his wife Arzooben, fellow driver Zakirbhai and two
others) to the mass killing of 74 people from his village at Limbadiya chokdi and
Sampadia village, moves around without any protection. Two constables from the
Central Reserve Police Force based at the district headquarters in Himmatnagar
visit the eyewitnesses once a week to ensure that they are still alive. The eight
suspects booked for the mass murders, based on the eyewitnesses at an
identification parade in Modasa, roam free since they were granted bail by the high
court in July 2008. “I am a driver by profession, but with these people around I am
scared to move within the district. I prefer trips to Ahmedabad and faroff places.
This has brought down my monthly earnings from an average Rs 6,000 to Rs
2,000,” Ayubmiya complains.
In Kidiyad, Bashirmiya Sindhi lives in a tent near what was once his ancestral
home. The weeds have taken over the gutted remains of the old house that was
torched and razed by the mob. A .303 rifle belonging to the lone policeman who
stays with him and others who have returned, for their protection, hangs from a nail
outside. The eight years since that fateful day in 2002 have clearly taken their toll on
Bashirmiya. The frequent visits to police stations, repeated summons from the
court, and interviews with the media are all getting tiresome. “Kitni b aar b ole, sab
ko mar diya, hamari aankho ke saamne, humne dekha hai (How many times do
we say they killed them all, we saw them being killed),” he says. “There is no justice
in Gujarat.”
Theirs is not an isolated case. The ordeal of Kidiyad and its displaced people
applies to the rest of Gujarat too. As activistjournalist Indukumar Jani says: “Even
today, several thousand residents of this state belonging to the minority community
are unable to return to their place of birth, livelihood and residence simply because
of the fear that prevails in Gujarat even today. There is a continuing failure of the
constitutional machinery in the land of the Mahatma.”
Dipankar Gupta is forthright as he sums up the situation in Gujarat: “Muslims live in
constant fear of the state government. Compensation can be wrung out of the
administration, jobs can be found, schools too, and houses can be rebuilt. But who
will quell the fear that rises in them when a cracker goes off unexpectedly, or a truck
backfires on the streets?”
Infochange News & Features, January 2010
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Comments (1)
Written by Shital B, on 03022010 10:42
60 years as a republic and this is w hat w e have become cruel bullies, the strong preying
on the w eak, justice now here in sight and divisions everyw here. What a sorry state to be
in for a country that thought it w as putting all this behind it more than 60 years ago.
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