Sometimes, editing makes a story better. But sometimes, it also takes away the soul of the story. It is a constant conflict between what you think is important and what they feel can be done away with. But you were there, and you saw. And at the end of it, objectivity also means trying to highlight both sides. We spent time in both the villages, and got their versions of how things happened. Here's the story in its draft form. And of both the sides.
Nonlinear Narratives
Chinki Sinha
Muzzaffarnagar, November 5, 2013
That they want gun licenses isn't such a misplaced demand, a man says. After all, the state has failed to protect them. The fields with the sugarcane crop rising tall, and hiding so much, have become the killing fields. Nobody is cutting the crop anymore. It turns brown, and ripe. Unclaimed, uncared for. Not until the state concedes.
Shahnawaz Khan, a Samajwadi Party worker, gets into a white Scorpio with the Samajwadi Party flag. It starts to move. He raises his hand, and the vehicle stops.
“Our battle isn't with the Hindus. It is with Jat terrorism. If they can call their panchayats, so can we,” he says. “We have waited for too long.”
A panchayat of the Jats was called in for October 6. That has been postponed. The muslims have formed a Bhartiya Kisan Majdoor Manch on Sunday to negotiate for their rights. This is to fight Jat terrorism.
“We will fight the battle of the disenfranchised. We have been under the shadows of the Jats. Now, we will claim our space, and our dignity,” he says.
Night has descended. In Hussainpur, men are collected outside the pradhan's house. Section 144 is imposed. But they have disregarded it. Beyond this, the village is submerged in darkness. Except for when a woman wails out loud.
***
A young man sits in a corner, brooding, and a young woman wails.
“Amroz mera bhai. Kahan se dhoondh ke laoon tumhe,” Shabnam cries.
The mother Khurshida Begum, a frail old woman, breaks down.
“Mere kaleje ka tukda,” she says. “They killed him. They killed my innocent son.”
Men and women from the village sit in the house discussing the killings that happened on Oct. 29.
Suddenly, the sister shouts, and collapses. She is propped up.
"We want justice. Khoon ka badla khoon,” she says, and a village elder chides her.
“No, not that way,” he says. “That will mean many more killings.”
That evening, Amroz, 20, had gone to the fields with his cousins. His mother was at home when someone asked her where her son was, and told her to look for him. She ran to the fields but on the way, she was held, and brought back in. That's when they told her that her son had been killed. For the mother, who brought up five children after their father died 12 years ago, it was a loss she still can't express in words. Because when you lose a son, it is like losing your eyes, hands, heart, she says.
They had butchered the bodies. Eyes, hands, and other parts were dismembered. If killing them was not enough, she says.
She didn't see the body. She couldn't have.
The family is poor. The elder brother Pervez worked as a tailor. None of the siblings could finish school. They dropped out one by one. Amroz used to work in Delhi in one of the many sweat shops. He would come once in five or six months. He had been in the village for about a few days to take care of his mother who has been unwell.
The youngest brother Adam pushes forward the cellphone with his brother's photo. He had attended the village primary school until Class 5, and then gave up. The sisters had to be married off, and the house needed to be taken care of.
“He was responsible. He would send more than half of what he earned to us. He made only Rs. 7000 per month,” the mother says. “They took him away. What had he done. He was just a son and a brother. A poor man. Nothing more. There was no time to be anything more.”
***
After three Muslim youth were killed in Hussainpur in Budhana on October 29, there is an uneasy calm in the two villages. It is an imposed calm.
“Like before a storm,” a man says. “It won't last.”
A woman and an infant were killed the same day in Lisarh. On Sunday, a young woman was raped. Killings have been reported in the district elsewhere too. It is not not going to stop, Shahnawaz says.
***
Near where the graves are, the sugarcane plants rise from the ground. They almost block the view except where the ground rises and tumbles into the other village – Mohammadpur Raisingh. That's the village where the bodies were allegedly taken. One of the young men was still alive. He died on the way.
The three were returned to their village Husseinpur dead. The blood dripped from the polythene that wrapped their bodies. Because the head was almost severed. If you tapped it, it would fall to the other side, a man says. Fingers were chopped off, eyes had been pulled out, legs had been cut off, they say. The father couldn't bear to look at his own son's remains. There were just remains, he says. They couldn't have made up the whole.
“I had seen him as a human. Not as minced meat,” Anees Khan, father of Ajmal, says.
They couldn't do the rituals. Not even the Gusal, and then the hurry to quickly bury them lest the tensions flare up again. But it did. Despite the fact the graves were dug in a section of a farm next to the graveyard because an actual grave would have taken sometime to dig.
Thousands had congregated that morning at the madrasa in the village. On three cots, they bodies were lain. The blood stains are still there on the canvas of the cot. Thick and stubborn. Maroon in colour. Stale blood.
Even on the ground, the blood marks emerge. There was a lot of blood. Despite the polythene wrapping. They were young, healthy men, Umar Daraz Khan, Ajmal's elder brother says.
He was around when the postmortem was going on. In fact, he had suggested wrapping the bodies in polythene bags.
“Even the police had tears in their eyes. It was strange looking at the bodies,” he says. “I returned in the morning.”
Amroz, 20, Meharban, 21, and Ajmal, 22, were beaten to death in the fields. Parallel narratives emerge from both the villages that have lived side by side for decades about the killings. The truth lies somewhere in between.
In September, riots broke out in Muzzaffarnagar district in UP after a Muslim youth was killed for allegedly staking a Jat girl. Then, two Jat men were lynched in retaliation. As per the official figures, the death count stands under 70. But the communities say it is more than 500. Bodies, they say, were dumped in streams, and families are missing. More than 30 relief camps have been set up to house those that have fled from their villages. Members of the minority community in Mohammadpur Rai Singh village had fled to Hussainpur on the night of September 7 when mob came for them. The next morning, arson was reported from their quarters.
Around 900 remain in Hussainpur. They have refused to go back. Now, the return is impossible, they have said.
In Hussainpur, the Hindus were scared but they were promised 'no harm' and security. The Jats are responsible. There are 36 biradaris here including Dalits and Thakurs.
“Our fight is with the Jats,” Shahnawaz says.
They have demanded Rs. 25 lakhs compensation, a government job, the arrest of all accused, and gun licenses among other things. At a panchayat called in soon after the killings, they decided they would ask the government, which has been tagged as that of the minority, and for the minority, for these. Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had turned up wearing a skull cap. Then came a horde of other politicians. There was a war of words between the various political parties – all of them blaming the others for not controlling the riots. When they decided to deploy the PAC, Akhilesh had his reservations. The PAC has been accused of killing Muslims in the Hashimpura riots that broke out in Meerut in 1987. It remains a case pending in the Tis Hazari court in Delhi.
Now, the Jats in Mohammadpur say PAC killed the miscreants. An enquiry has been ordered. But in encounters, the police doesn’t cut up bodies. They shoot, Gul Mohammad says.
That the PAC didn’t take action is another story. What led to which killing is still a matter of perspective here.
When the mob came, they shouted “Pakistan ya Kabristan” and they came with weapons.
Mohammadpur Raisingh fares better than Hussainpur in terms of land ownership. More houses are pucca here. The muslims mostly work as agricultural labourers or migrate to other cities to earn a living. The private school is in Lusana, about a kilometer from Hussainpur.
***
In the courtyard, the women have congregated. They read the holy verses. In heavy voices that often trail off, and then they cry. Collectively, and helplessly.
The father Abad Khan stands and watches his other son Farmaan fill water. The four sisters sit around their mother as they mourn the death of their brother Meharban. Meharban used to drive trucks, and would come home twice a year. His wife and three children lived with his parents.
He doesn't speak much. He is short, and his wrinkled face is calm. It had to be this way, he says.
Sometimes he goes and sits at the pradhan's house where others smoke hookahs, and discuss the riots. He seldom speaks there. He sits in a corner, and hears what they have to say about the killings.
Meharban was born in a poor family. His father didn't have any land and worked as a day labourer. The sons used to help out and then Meharban found a job as a truck driver in the state, and the younger son remained in the village. The father is old and shriveled. He doesn't know what to do, he says
***
On the door of the mosque in Mohammadpur Raisingh, someone had scrawled abusive words. You push open the door and there's a courtyard. The wall beyond is covered in soot. But the green of the mosque established in 1965 is intact. On a sunny afternoon, the green and the pink stands out. It is only when you enter the sanctum, you see that it was desecrated. The walls are sooty. Nothing remains here except the ashes, and discarded Sprite bottle, and such other garbage.
The two rooms are bare. Except for the curtains that billow in the wind. Then the children come in, and the adults follow. They had been watching.
“They took the stuff away,” a young boy says. “We didn't burn anything.”
A young girl motions to him to keep quiet. Silence works best here. They keep looking.
There is this row of burned houses. Arson had happened, according to the police. Not a raging fire, but enough to turn the colour of the walls black.
***
On both sides there are sugarcane fields. The road is narrow, and there's a school on the way. A lock hangs on the door. This is Lusana, and beyond this is Hussainpur. Policemen sit outside the village. Section 144 is imposed in the area after the killings but Haji Sagur Querishi is sitting with a group of 20 men at the village chaupal.
“They haven't arrested all of them yet,” he says. “The panchayat will happen. It will decide the future course of action. If the state grants our six demands, we shall thank them in the panchayat. Else, we shall contemplate on our strategy. For these past few days, we have been composed. But we can't hold the anger for too long.”
The road passes through Hussainpur. From the other village, they have stopped sending their children to school. There's fear, and dread. There's an eerie silence here. Except for when the children come out of the madrasa. Their banter breaks the monotony of silence. Then it returns.
“We said don't fight. We can't not fight forever,” he says. “We had said let the children go to school in Lusana. We won't do anything. We won't touch them. We want peace.”
Other men nod. There are men who are angry. They speak about the morning when the bodies were brought to the madrasa. They had said they wouldn't bury them until the state fulfilled their demands. But blood isn't an easy sight. It disturbs. It makes you angry, he says.
There was a lot of blood. So much that the ground bears the stains, he says.
Hussainpur is within 12 km radius of the other village that were ravaged by the riots that broke out in Muzzaffarnagar district in September. Rumours abound. They say the girls were made to dance after they had been stripped of their clothing in Fugana. Rapes had happened. Families had been killed, made to leave their villages, and live in horrid conditions in camps set up by the state.
“Exile is a tough choice. But when death stares you in the face, you leave,” Querishi, a village elder, says. “We had given shelter to 900 muslims that were fleeing from neighboring villages, including Muhammadpur Raisingh. We even brokered a peace deal with them.”
The past has not passed. They want to forget the riots, begin their return to whatever they tag as normalcy. In forgetfulness, and omissions lie their future, he says.
“But it is not easy to forget. Not when they keep killing,” he says.
Just as they were beginning to send families back to their villages, three young men were killed. Now, nobody wants to go back. They are everywhere in this village.
They are the ones with sad eyes, and ghost-like faces.
“Yeh Mohammadpur wale hain” they point out. It is not necessary. They are in this nonlinear space. Suspended for now. The past has not passed for them.
***
There's a blue poster. It has a convertible, red in colour, and a house, and a garden, and a table and four chairs outside. Sweet Home, it says.
There are other things, too. Like trees and flowers. Grass and fence. An ideal home.
But it is torn on the edges. It hangs above the door. Inside, there are remnants of what made up a sweet home. This is Munni's home. Or used to be. An old woman on the roof of another house looks down, and shouts.
“We weren't here. We had run away in fear. They are all gone now,” she says. “If they hadn't, the house would have been maintained.”
“Was it burned?”
“No, the soot that you see is from the kitchen. They used to cook here,” a man says. “Nobody burned anything.”
The walls are broken. The doors hang loose on the hinges. These were ravaged.
***
When they show the postmortem reports of the three men, Anees Khan bends forward, and moves his fingers over the figure they have drawn. Nothing is clear. But there is the outline, and it is of his son.
So he thinks. But it is of Meharban. Doesn't matter to those that are congregated here. They were all cousins. As per the police, there were more than 10 injuries on each body.
“I couldn't even look at my own son's body. Even butchers don't indulge in such barbarism,” he says.
He hands over the copy, and looks the other way.
At his house next to the fields, his wife Bano holds the prayer beads in silence.
“I am praying for the son I lost,” she says.
She cries, and averts her eyes. There's the story to be told. It is important for them that they tell that their son was not a killer on the prowl. He was a 20-year-old man, who worked as a truck driver. He would come home once in a couple of months, and stay for sometime and return. It was a difficult job but it was better than working in the others' fields.
That morning, he had come from Kolkata. Bano had cooked a simple meal – kichri. Everyone was complaining of fever. It had begun to get cold here.
Since then, they haven't cooked another meal. They are in mourning. If he were sick, it would not have hurt so much. It is anger, it is frustration, and it is loss. It was undeserved, she says.
“Our son had never fought with anyone. He wasn't brought up like that,” she says.
In the other village across the fields, they say the men had attacked one of their community members. In the ensuing fight, they were shot by the PAC.
“How can we turn killers? We were the refuge of those that had to leave their homes in that village,” she says, and goes back to praying.
There's nothing more to be said. There are other narratives, other truths. Depending on where you were, one truth collapsed to give rise to another.
***
In the dark chambers of the pradhan, a Dalit on the reserved seat, there are a few men listening in to the conversation.
The pradhan Omkar Singh speaks in measured sentences. It is a rehearsed speech.
“Kab tak jalega Muzzaffarnagar?” he asks.
It is evening. He begins with his narrative.
“There was the Kawal panchayat, and people from this village had also gone. There was stone pelting, and other such things, and in the chaos, 1200 unknown people came to this village and set the houses that belonged to the muslims on fire,” he says.
He says he wasn't there. He was sitting in his house when he saw the smoke rise in the air. It was a dangerous time to be out in the village, he says.
***
Raeesu was killed on September 8. He had insisted he would stay behind. His neighbors wouldn't kill him. He was old. Perhaps 70, his daughter-in-law says.
They had all escaped. The women jumped off the windows, and the roofs, and ran into the fields.
But Raaesu stayed on. They say they even cut the legs on his horses, and cut him in three parts.
Omkar Singh says Raaesu was old and sick.
“We can't say how he died but we carry the blame,” he says.
Now, they fail to recognise us if they see us, he says.
“We lived together once,” he adds.
Raaesu's grave is an unmarked one. In these parts, they don't name the graves. They know who lies where.
Raaesu doesn't lie far from where the other three have been put to rest. Next to his grave, they are digging another one. A woman died that morning. She was from the other village. A refugee.
Even in death, they were not returned to where they came from. She would be buried here, next to Raaesu. In Hussainpur. In exile.
***
Rajinder Fauji was at his fields in the evening to water his crop when he was ambushed, and three masked men put a gun to his forehead. He was able to escape. There were three other farmers with Rajinder, the pradhan says.
His feet were injured, but once he was back in Mohammadpur Raisingh, he collected a group of men and told them about the masked men in the fields. They gathered the PAC men and went to confront the men. The three men, he says, were killed but the police took Rajinder away and kept him in custody.
Eight people were arrested. The Muslims from Hussainpur say 15 others are at large. They roam the fields in the militia style. They are armed and they are ruthless, they say.
Omkar Singh says the bodies were not brought to his village. They were taken away by the police but the Muslims feel they were killed in his village, which has around 10,000 people.
“We have tried to call the Muslims back. We constituted a Shanti Samiti of around 26 people and they would speak to the Muslims who left this village to come back. But they haven't come back,” he says.
The villagers say the state has turned its back on them. It is the government of the minority, and the police have been picking up their men at mere allegations. They have nowhere to go, he says.
In this part of UP, the politics is complicated. Who stands to gain by the riots is still unclear. The Muslims have traditionally followed the diktat from Deoband-based Darul Uloom with regards to voting, and they say they have always been with Mulayam Singh, who pushed for policies that would benefit the minority. But in case the recent riots that are taking an ugly turn with yet another rape incident of a Muslim refugee in Jogiya Khera on Sunday, and a shootout the following day that killed a Hindu named Mukul Singh and gravely injured two of his friends who are in the hospital, the government has been unable to protect them. It is them that had to flee their villages, suffer the loss of property, and dignity. But rash decisions are not the best way out, Mohd. Aslam says. He is the younger brother of Ajmal.
“We don't disrespect the fatwa. Loss is personal. They have done a lot for us,” he says.
***
There is only a primary school in the village. By way of education, the village has very low literacy. In the bid to survive starvation and dire poverty, education is the first casualty. Most men and women dropped out of school to work in the fields, or daily wage labourers to support their families. There is a small madrasa attached to the mosque where children can learn their basic.
For now the primary school in Hussainpur has been converted into a shelter for the families that have refused to return to their villages. Most of those who have stayed behind are from the neighboring village. They had seen the anger in the eyes of the men who had come for them. This won't end so soon, a woman says.
“Not now. Not in the near future,” Hamida says, as she makes rotis for her family.
***
They left in the middle of everything that they were doing – eating, cooking, sleeping. Because the men hadn't returned, and the mob was coming for them. They jumped from the roofs, and hid in the fields. Then, when dawn broke, they walked to Hussainpur, and asked for shelter.
Ishrana, 22, ran with her four children. It was chaos, she says. Nobody knew which way to go.
It is a narrow lane where Muslim houses jostle for space with the ones that belong to the Jats. Their doors open to one another. It wasn't easy to run. So, they got out into the fields.
“Those who couldn't run were caught,” she says.
Shahnawaz has said at least five women from Mohammadpur Raisingh village have complained to the Mahila Aayog team that came visiting that they were sexually assaulted. They have also alleged rape. But FIRs have not been filed, and the women won't come out and speak about it. There's the fear of being ostracised. Rapes are used as fear tactics in such situations, Shahnawaz says. In earlier reports from the riot-affected villages like Lisarh and Kandhla, women have said they were gang-raped. But the police has only registered five such complaints so far from those areas. In such situations, there are all kinds of stories. Some true, a few manufactured.
***
That evening, there is some commotion from the fields that lie closer to Mohammadpur Raisingh village. They watch from the graveyard. They are alert now. Anything can happen here. The tube well that waters the fields belonging to the Jat community lies in their zone. They have kept their word so far. They let them come and switch on the pump.
“We can't even go to the graves,” Arshad Khan, who lives in Hussainpur, says. “It is dangerous.”
Three trucks carrying RAF personnel go past. Nobody would accompany them to the graveyard.
Kotwal RK Sharma is doing the patrolling.
“Will you please come with us,” I ask him.
“Why do you want to go?” he asks. “Go ahead, I will come there.”
But he isn't around. Arshad Khan is not surprised.
“Now you can see,” he says.
The villagers have formed a group and together we walk through the narrow mud road past the Idgah, to the graves.
“These were dug in hurry. It could have triggered riots,” he says.
These fields belong to Anees Khan. It is a small holding. Barren, and adjoining the graveyard. From a little distance, men are carrying a coffin covered with a shawl. A woman died this morning. She was a refugee, Arshad Khan says.
They stop, and bow. Sohrab, another refugee from Mohammadpur Raisingh, is chipping away at the wood. He sits next to where they have dug up the earth. That's where she would be buried.
“It is for her grave,” he says. “It is a sad thing to be buried in someone else's land.”
The villagers have formed groups of 8-10 men to guard the village in the night. They roam the streets, and circle the village, and spend the night stationed in various spots ever since the riots broke out in early September.
On the way back, the kotwal meets us.
“You should not be here,” he says.
In the other village, they ask us if we know of a death on the way. Rumours abound. There was no killing. Fear and suspicion rule the behaviour. The farms are mixed. Their plots overlap. Now, there is no Muslim left in Mohammadpur Raisingh. Their abandoned, charred houses are the only reminders of the 'others' who lived here.
***
In Mohammadpur Raisingh, there is a little lane that leads into the muslim quarters. These are abandoned homes. They say they miss their neighbors.
“Manga is 80 years old. He was picked up by the police,” the pradhan says. “The police is against us. They blame us.”
On Sunday, they sit in little groups, and speak softly about the killings. It is Diwali but there is a diktat from the khap that no villages should celebrate the festival of lights, of riddance of evil, of the victory of good over bad. Dispel the darkness, pradhan says.
But in the streets, there is talk about a possible attack.
“They will come for us,” a young boy says. “Ichi Manga, the pradhan of Hussainpur, has said he will take revenge. We can't go outside. We are confined.”
No candles are being sold here. In villages, the panchayats are the final word. Nobody dares to defy what they have decided. Soemthing dark and unforseen plagues us, Omkar Singh says.
***
Gul Mohammad, who is Shahnawaz's younger brother, is sitting outside the house. It is night, and tea is served in small white cups.
“Kawal is far. You can't have 1200 unknown men come to your village and set fire to the houses and not know about it,” he says. “The pradhan is lying. It is a village. It is not a city that is vast.”
One of the accused, he says, has committed many murders.
“We had a peace treaty with them. In this guerilla sort of war, there is no safety. So we invited them here, and agreed that business would resume as usual. You cut grass in the morning, and we will go to the fields in the evening,” he says.
Shahnawaz, who is the pradhan's husband, is the man in charge. He comes and sits. He says the night of the killings, he made at least 20 calls to the OP Chaudhary, the inspector in charge of the Bhoran Kalan police chowki, but they went unanswered.
When they left the village to claim the bodies, the police met them on the way.
“We had hope. I said maybe they are just injured. We can take them to the hospital,” he says.
There is a history to their end of their patience with the other village. Around three years ago, a jammat had come from Delhi. The Tablighis, he says, and they went to Mohammadpur Raisingh. Some fight followed, and he had intervened, kept the political leaders out of the situation, and brokered a deal.
“It was our matter. We resolved it,” he says. “But they are crossing their limits. This time, we tried. But everything has spilled over.”
The pradhan had got death threats after he provided shelter to the fleeing families of Mohammadpur Raisingh village. They told us to send them back, he says.
***
At the Budhana police station, a woman refuses to give out the copies of the FIR registered with regards to the violence in Hussainpur.
When the inspector comes, he shows the copy of the FIR that is registered in the name of Md. Qais, who was with the three victims in the fields on that day. He and another young man had managed to escape, and that's how the word got around.
The FIR was filed on Oct. 30. On the previous night, the villagers had paraded to the police station. The post mortem was done in the wee hours of the morning, and the bodies reached the village at around 7:30 am the next day.
In the FIR, Md. Qais has said he was with the other four and they had gone to cut grass in the fields. Rajendra Fauji with another 14 men had ambushed them. There were 10 other men with this group and they wielded lathis and other such weapons.
“Rajendra has said he was injured, but he hasn't given us any written complaints. Maybe he inflicted the injuries upon himself to make his case more genuine,” Dhananjoy Mishra, the inspector, who came from his posting in Allahabad to Budhan on September 14.
It has been a challenging time. He spends most of his time roaming the villages, and speaking to people, telling them to keep the faith.
“We recovered the bodies from near the fields in between the two villages. There were a lot of injuries but when a mob kills, it is no surprise,” he says. “Those who died have no police record of criminal behaviour. We will normalize the situation.”
But that's a tall claim. With 30 odd policemen in each village, and the touring RAF personnel, it won't be an easy task. Already, the police have been attacked in incidents elsewhere.
“Section 144 is imposed. There will be no panchayats,” he says.
The Akhilesh Yadav government has come under fire for reacting late to the riots, and Azam Khan, a maverick political leader of the SPA, is alleged to have asked the police to let the rioting go on. UP has a history of riots, and Muzzaffarnagar and Meerut have been sensitive and volatile regions in the state. There are many allegations. The BJP is blaming the ruling party for inaction. Elections are due next year. Political affiliations switch, and vote bank politics is already under way.
***
“This was Soumin's house,” Deepak, a 13-year-old boy says.
I may have got the name wrong. But he repeats.
The door is unhinged. In the little yard inside, the stove has been broken, and the soot stains the brick walls.
There is a bag in one of the two rooms that served as living quarters for his family. They had four children. They were poor. But the children were fun, they say.
Clothes are strewn. There's a broken pitcher, a dismembered hookah, and a sandal that may have belonged to the little girl that lived here once upon a time.
Outside, the children are giggling.
Yet another house. Here, there is a half-door. How does one describe a door that has a lock on it but its sides have been chopped off. There is a curtain too. Inside, there is a bottle of medicine among other leftovers.
We unhinge the doors where they have let these remain, or just walk into a time warp. It is difficult to reconstruct. Riots don't afford that luxury of time.
Doors lead into empty, barren chambers. That's where we see it. Sweet Home poster. Munni's house, Deepak says.
A few days later, a few people had returned with the police to take away their things. They walked into their charred houses, and reclaimed whatever was left. Then they left. No greetings had been exchanged.
Rampalli says the compensation works as temptation. Some burned their own houses.
“Will you send us to jail for saying this?” she asks.
“We helped them load their things on to the cars. We told them to come back,” she says. “But their pradhan has said shoot anyone that you see. So children don't go to school anymore. We are being targeted.”
Santosh, an old woman, walks in.
“They have refused to acknowledge us. We had attended their weddings. We ate together, lived together, and now we pretend as if we never knew each other,” she says. “It is so sad. 25 bighas of our land is gone. We can't cut the crop. There's a lot of loss.”
Ankit, a young man who says he was shot in the back and spent days at the hospital in Muzzaffarnagar battling for his life, says Ikram, Iqbal and Manga hit him.
“They hit me without cause. I was in the fields working. One other man was shot in his legs,” he says. “But who is going to listen to our stories?”
He filed an FIR at the Bhoran Kalan police chowki but says nothing was done about it.
***
“Khuda is on our side,” Hamida says as she serves food to a little girl.
The children cry for their home. They tell her to return.
“How does one tell them home is no more,” she says.
Three families that fled from the other village are living in Shahnawaz's house. The other families are scattered throughout the village.
“Everything is gone,” she says. “But I will never go back.”
Around 10 families are living in the primary school. The school runs in a small room for now.
Hina is Raeesu's daughter-in-law. She says they lost their animals, and their land.
“They cut the feet of the horses. They were so brutal,” she says.
In the fields, horses with bruises run amuck. They are without their harness, and they, it seems, are also looking for shelter.
At around 1:22, the muezzing calls for prayers. Men are sitting inside the primary school. They are waiting. They have been waiting ever since to return, or to start afresh. But in times like these, it is like being suspended in time. There are promises, and there are assurances.
Inside one of the rooms, there is a bed, and a few almirahs. A set of cups, and some utensils. There are boxes and some furniture that was reclaimed.
“We went back. Some of us to retrieve whatever was left. We got it,” Afroz says.
Mohsina, 16, is stoic. She was studying in intermediate and her exams are due in March. But her books are gone, and so are her certificates. Her father Afroz says he would try and buy her books, and enroll her in a distant education program.
Mohsina averts her face. She doesn't want to talk about the loss of her future.
“She secured 63 percentnin Class 10. She is bright. But now she is always sad,” Afroz says.
Mohsina walks outside.
“I am determined. I will study,” she says. “I want to be a reporter. I want to tell my story.”
On one of the walls, it says “Vipatti mein dhairya rakho”.
“Keep faith in times of trouble.”
Two women stare at the wall. They probably can't read. But Mohsina can.
She keeps the faith. For now.
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