53 lives lost and still count­ing. In­dian Par­lia­ment silent. In­dian ju­di­ciary en­gaged in pride and se­man­tics. As­saults on women. Ear-marked houses, shops and mosques tar­geted and de­stroyed. Po­lice and politi­cians com­plicit with acts of com­mis­sion and omis­sion. Hu­man­ity died, bar­barism ruled… and this is only a pre­lim­i­nary ac­count by Youth for Hu­man Rights Doc­u­men­ta­tion in their 105-page re­port of Delhi 2020.

DELHI IS THE CITY OF DJINNS -THE LIV­ING AND THE DEAD. In this day and age, in the year Two thou­sand and twenty AD, the cap­i­tal of In­dia saw un­prece­dented or­gan­ised mass vi­o­lence -or­ches­trated by non-state ac­tors, prompted and sup­ported by state ac­tors and agen­cies.  Even writ­ing this sounds cliché. A pogrom is a pogrom and there is no other word to de­scribe Delhi 2020.

All that hap­pened in Delhi was a whole­sale hate crime led pogrom and the world will do well to view it thus. Only by see­ing it this way, one will be able to un­der­stand. The pro­pa­ganda against Mus­lims, the tar­geted vi­o­lence against Mus­lims, the slo­ga­neer­ing against the iden­tity of the Mus­lims, no ac­count­abil­ity so far for the role of the Delhi po­lice and ad­min­is­tra­tion for full four days, the un­cer­tainty over dis­ap­pear­ances, the ar­bi­trary ar­rests and de­ten­tions of the Mus­lim fam­i­lies and ac­tivists, the ut­ter fail­ure of the med­ical re­lief fa­cil­i­ties at the Delhi hos­pi­tals, the hush-hush cover-up of gen­der vi­o­lence and the ab­sence of the gov­ern­ment in res­cue and re­lief is shock­ing, dis­gust­ing and sin­ful.

All this has hap­pened in front of our eyes, we are see­ing it live on TV, hear­ing about it, read­ing about it, “while the In­dian Ju­di­ciary and the In­dian Par­lia­ment are wait­ing to cel­e­brate Holi be­fore even hear­ing what tragedy has tran­spired right in the cap­i­tal of In­dia amidst the me­dia glaze.”

Will the Delhi Po­lice ever at­tempt to ex­plain how a large of the deaths are due to gun-shot wounds? Will the po­lice higher-ups be able to ex­plain why they hin­dered med­ical re­lief?

An Ac­count of Fear & Im­punity – A Pre­lim­i­nary Fact-Find­ing Re­port on Com­mu­nally Tar­geted Vi­o­lence in NE Delhi, Feb­ru­ary 2020, right­fully laments that “Though the vi­o­lence in Delhi is be­ing pro­jected as some ran­dom at­tacks, this de­tailed re­port re­veals how this was a com­mu­nally tar­geted and or­gan­ised mass vi­o­lence. 53 deaths and count­ing, sto­ries of mo­lesta­tion, tor­tured and mu­ti­la­tion of bod­ies, mas­sive de­struc­tion of mosques, houses and shops- have been recorded.”

Will the Delhi Po­lice ever at­tempt to ex­plain how a large of the deaths are due to gun-shot wounds? Will the po­lice higher-ups be able to ex­plain why they hin­dered med­ical re­lief?

The re­port high­lights the Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty’s per­spec­tive into the episode of vi­o­lence and their strug­gle to live while deal­ing with fear and trauma. The least that you as a reader can do is to live through the tragedy by read­ing the 105 pages and then form an opin­ion about Mo­han­das Karam­c­hand Gand­hi’s In­dia.

The re­port de­scribes in graphic de­tail that the Pri­mary ar­eas in North East Delhi im­pacted by the vi­o­lence in­clude Shiv Vi­har, Mustafabad (in­clud­ing Bha­gi­rathi Vi­har and Bri­jpuri), Chand Bagh, Mau­jpur, Gokulpuri, Kar­dampuri, Noor-e-Ilahi, Kha­juri Khas and Bha­jan­pura. Out of these Shiv Vi­har, Mau­jpur-Babarpur, Chand Bagh and Jaf­frabad are mixed pop­u­la­tion ar­eas, with lanes which are Hindu-dom­i­nated, that left Mus­lims iso­lated and vul­ner­a­ble. All these ar­eas are marked by poor so­cio-eco­nomic in­di­ca­tors. The area also has a large pop­u­la­tion of mi­grant, daily wage work­ers from UP, Bi­har & West Ben­gal.

The least that you as a reader can do is to live through the tragedy by read­ing the 105 pages and then form an opin­ion about Mo­han­das Karam­c­hand Gand­hi’s In­dia. 

The tes­ti­monies of vic­tims and their fam­i­lies make dif­fi­cult read­ing. It is a demon­stra­tion of how the Bharatiya Janata Party and its top lead­er­ship has been pre­sid­ing over hate and en­act­ing black laws like the CAA to even­tu­ally dis­en­fran­chise a large sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion to pur­sue their dream of Hindu In­dia.

Is not time to wind up the Na­tional Hu­man Rights Com­mis­sion of In­dia, whose chief -HL Dattu, on the heels of the con­tin­u­ing vi­o­lence in Delhi stated in the me­dia that the vi­o­lence in the cap­i­tal could not be termed com­mu­nal and was in­stead an “aber­ra­tion”.

On 25 Feb­ru­ary 2020, the Chair­man of the Delhi Mi­nor­ity Com­mis­sion, in a let­ter ad­dressed

Will the Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor of Delhi Anil Bai­jal prof­fer an ex­cuse as to why did he not re­spond to the Delhi Mi­nori­ties Com­mis­sion re­quest for im­po­si­tion of cur­few in North East Delhi and de­ploy­ment of more po­lice force on 25 Feb­ru­ary?

“Though the vi­o­lence in Delhi is be­ing pro­jected as some ran­dom at­tacks, this de­tailed re­port re­veals how this was a com­mu­nally tar­geted and or­gan­ised mass vi­o­lence. 53 deaths and count­ing, sto­ries of mo­lesta­tion, tor­tured and mu­ti­la­tion of bod­ies, mas­sive de­struc­tion of mosques, houses and shops- have been recorded.”

In Ke­jri­wal’s healthy Delhi runs the ‘Blood Drain’, “An open drain that runs across most of the af­fected area has been used by the per­pe­tra­tors to dump the bod­ies and sev­ered body parts. While many bod­ies have al­ready been re­trieved from this drain, the com­mu­nity sus­pects many more will be re­trieved when this drain is dredged.”

Right un­der the nose of the rulers of the coun­try, there is glar­ing im­punity to the per­pe­tra­tors. The re­port notes, “The per­pe­tra­tors have car­ried out their ac­tions with a sig­nif­i­cant amount of im­punity and have con­tin­ued to en­joy the same. The Fact-find­ing team heard grue­some ac­counts of many peo­ple be­ing shot by firearms, stabbed with knives and swords, body cut into pieces and dumped in the drain and peo­ple be­ing burnt alive in the fire. Me­dia re­ports have car­ried chill­ing con­fes­sions of self-pro­claimed ‘ri­ot­ers.”

The hate-mon­ger­ing by In­dian Min­is­ters Anurag Thakur and DV Sadanand Gowda, BJP politi­cians Kapil Mishra and Parvesh Sharma have been thor­oughly doc­u­mented.

In Ke­jri­wal’s healthy Delhi runs the ‘Blood Drain’, “An open drain that runs across most of the af­fected area has been used by the per­pe­tra­tors to dump the bod­ies and sev­ered body parts. While many bod­ies have al­ready been re­trieved from this drain, the com­mu­nity sus­pects many more will be re­trieved when this drain is dredged.”

The fear­less band of young vol­un­teers, who spared no ef­fort, day and night, not only doc­u­ment­ing the may­hem and mur­der but also pro­vid­ing sup­port and suc­cour to the poor­est of the poor Mus­lim men, women and chil­dren are dis­traught at the cal­lous­ness of the pow­ers that be but have not given up.

The ex­haus­tive 105-page re­port “calls for ur­gent at­ten­tion be­cause many peo­ple are still miss­ing, many bod­ies are be­ing feared to have been lost and de­com­posed in the drains run­ning across the af­fected ar­eas, dis­place­ment of en­tire colonies, and cre­ation of ghet­toes of Mus­lim fam­i­lies.”

Post-No­vem­ber 1984, Who Are The Guilty by PUCL and PUDR recorded in graphic de­tail the mur­der and may­hem against Sikhs and the re­port served as a doc­u­ment to iden­tify and try the lumpens as well the po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship. This re­port will be­come the ba­sis for Nurem­berg trails of the fas­cist right-wing hate mon­gers of mod­ern In­dia.