A day after open threats were issued to them, residents of a slum cluster in Palra village of Gurugram’s Sector 70A on Wednesday, August 2, 2023, said majority of the families, most of them from parts of West Bengal, fled the area while the remaining live in fear with some spending the night in a wooded area even as the Gurugram police continue to deny any incident in the area.
The flames of the communal violence, that began in the Mewat region’s Nuh on Monday after clashes broke out during a religious procession of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, spread to Gurugram and other districts of southern Haryana by Tuesday. On Tuesday, a mob of members of some right wing outfits assaulted the slum dwellers of Palra village and told them to vacate the slums and “go back to where you came from”. Some garbage and tyre puncture shops were also set ablaze in the area in the night.
Locals said nearly 800-900 families live in the slums on rent with most of them employed as garbage collectors, or domestic workers or housekeeping staff in nearby residential societies.
Nabeel Ahmad, a native of West Bengal’s Dakshin Dinajpur who cleans cars in societies, said about 25 motorbikes with two-three men each came to the area around 11 a.m. on Tuesday and started thrashing random people while asking for identity proof.
“While most of them carried lathis, some even have swords and guns. They asked our names or ID proofs and started thrashing the Muslims. They said all Muslims must leave the area by 4 p.m. or they would burn houses, said Mr. Ahmad, adding that the men thrashed women too. “Maybe they wanted to make a statement that even women will not be spared.”
Police inaction
He said that even though the police came soon after, the mob returned around 5.30 p.m. “One person from the mob slapped me in front of the police. The police tried to disperse them but did not take any action,” he said.
Shabana Bibi, a domestic worker, said about 8-10 families spent the night in a nearby jungle area.
“I have three small children, I fed them biscuits with water and slept them on the ground in the jungle. We were so scared after the thrashing and threats that we could not stay here,” she said.
Shafiuddin Ali, a diabetic who came to live with his son about seven months ago from a village near Kolkata, said about 90% of Muslim families from the cluster left since Tuesday.
“Those who are left either have gotten their tickets for today [Wednesday] or don’t have the money to buy a train ticket. Some like me don’t have anywhere else to go as we came here after selling our everything in the village,” he said.
He said the police were present in the area on Tuesday night. “They left in the morning and asked us to make arrangements for ourselves now. Even our landlords have asked us to vacate amid the situation,” he said.
Blames social media
Siddhant Jain, Deputy Commissioner of Police (south Gurugram), however, blamed rumours on social media for the fear among people and said nobody was “asked to leave the area and everything was peaceful”.
“This was a fake news doing the rounds on social media, no such threat was given to people from any community. Some stray incident might have happened on Tuesday but we have sufficient deployment of local police and paramilitary forces in the area to deal with any situation,” he told The Hindu.
He said 12 FIRs had been registered and preventive action taken against six persons under CrPC Sections 107 and 151 in south Gurugram. Nearly 800 personnel, including two companies of the Rapid Action Force (RAF) and local police, were also deployed in the region, the DCP said.
(Names of slum dwellers changed to conceal identity due to their fear of being attacked.)
