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.