WSN Editor writes an Open Letter to the brother of 15-year-old Junaid Khan from Nuh, Haryana who was killed in a cold-blooded public murder in a train from India’s national capital Delhi to their home.

Dear Faisal Khan
Aadab!
Reading through the brutal account of the beating of your brothers and the eventual death of your elder brother Junaid Khan in the train has benumbed me. I am ashamed of myself. I am ashamed of living in a society which continues its life as if nothing has happened.

Through you, I would like to convey my condolences and feelings to your parents, your siblings and the residents of your village Khaddawali, near Nuh, at the loss of a great young man who at 15 showed qualities which many would not even dream about. How many students at the age of 15 know anything more than their textbooks and songs of Bollywood?

I was amazed that at the age of 14 plus, your brother could recite all the 80,000 verses of the Quran without reading from it and he spent the last month of his life reciting the same to his villagers, day after day during the month of Ramzan. I do not know how uncommon this is amongst those who attend the madrasas, but I think it is certainly a feat by any standard and it is no wonder that Junaid Khan was a hafiz (one who knows the Quran). How many times does one come across a young Muslim who likes playing cricket and who eats soya-biryani and not chicken or mutton biryani? I am certain that Brahmins eating meat are more than Muslims eating vegetarian foods.

I cried inconsolably when I read Harsh Mander’s befitting tribute to your brother entitled “Junaid my son” in the Indian Express.

“I was amazed that at the age of 14 plus, your brother was Hafiz (one who knows Quran) Junaid Khan, could recite all the 80,000 verses of the Quran without reading from it and he spent the last month of his life reciting the same to his villagers, day after day during the month of Ramzan. How many times does one come across a young Muslim who likes playing cricket and who eats soya-biryani and not chicken or mutton biryani? I am certain that Brahmins eating meat are more than Muslims eating vegetarian foods.”

Faisal -at 12 years, you are too young to fathom the ways of the world, but as your father Jalaluddin had warned Junaid before he stepped out of the house on that fateful day, “Beware, the times are bad, this country is now moving to a system which you and I cannot understand. We are being sucked in.” Everything is black and white. Either you are with “them” or you are “not with them.” What used to happen in Gujarat or Delhi or Dadri once in awhile is now a stunning daily occurrence! Though we have bold campaigns like “Not in my name”, I dont know how they will save another Junaid Khan, with the Prime Minister converting it into a violence-non-violence issue and understating the stark day to day reality unfolding before us every day.

Humanity died at the Asoti railway station where no one, repeat No One, came forward to help your bleeding brother Junaid -no vendor, no passenger, no onlooker, no coolie, no station staffer, no taxi driver, no auto driver, no railway motorman, no ticket checker. Not only did they not help but they turned their backs and became inhuman cannibals and even the following day said: “they did not see or hear anything”. Such crass behaviour can only put humanity to shame and such a town and city where such people live should be smashed into smithereens. A poet once said, “Set fire to a city which does not wake up to a call of a fellow human for justice.”

This happens because the state does not wake up. It happens because the Railways do not have a proper system of travel for the poor. It also happens because the state machinery protects killers, not victims. It happens because no judge awards exemplary damages to the Indian Railways for killings in the trains, on their tracks and platforms.

“Humanity died at the Asoti railway station where no one, repeat No One, came forward to help your bleeding brother Junaid -no vendor, no passenger, no onlooker, no coolie, no station staffer, no taxi driver, no auto driver, no railway motorman, no ticket checker.”

In this hour of grief, I would like to share that the Sikh community is not new to killings in trains. In 1947, we had the trains to Pakistan and the trains from Pakistan made immortal by Khushwant Singh’s famous historical novel, “Train to Pakistan.” In 1984, there were trains to Delhi and from Delhi wherein Sikhs were pulled out in exactly the same manner as your brother -maimed, killed and in some cases burnt alive. The stations of Nangloi and Tughlakabad will always bear the scar of the stigma of being killing tracks of high-ranking Sikh military officers who were brutally killed here after being disarmed.

“A poet once said, “Set fire to a city which does not wake up to a call of a fellow human for justice.””

Like your brother, many in this country have gone to Delhi not to return back. Delhi is a city of Djinns as called by William Dalrymple. Like your elder brother who is now scared to travel by the same Delhi-Mathura passenger, I too am on full alert when moving into Delhi or out of Delhi in any local or mail train. The lumpens entering these trains from either side are the solid vote banks of political parties; they are a bunch of trained thugs who are used by political parties to further their hidden agendas. From Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to Ballabgarh in Haryana, the Indian Railway authorities succumb to the mobsters. No ticket checking, Railway Police only as a namesake and absolute criminal behaviour in the unreserved cabins or in the reserved coaches. How else does one explain that the old man to whom Junaid Khan offered a seat was seen egging the killers when they were beating your brothers?

If the police find him (what a joke!), I wish to see deep into the eyes of this individual looking so deep that I can see the inhumanity which was referred to by William Golding in his award-winning novel, “Lord of the Flies”.

“Don’t let the killers go scot free. Shame them. Shame their families. Shame their promoters. Shame their protectors. Let them know what Bhagat Kabir said, “Jo padosi ke huha so apne bhi jaan.” -what has happened unto your neighbour can happen to you as well. Beware!”

The barbarians who killed your brother deserve no mercy. Understandably, your elder brother Hashim in whose lap your brother Junaid breathed his last and Mausim are getting nightmares. Tell them that they need to be bold and brave. Tell them that they need to do everything they can to identify not only those who knifed your brother but also everyone in that train cabin who were not mute spectators but accomplices in that brutal crime against humanity. Identify everyone who was at Asoti railway station and has chosen to stay silent. Put all their faces and names on a Facebook page and let humanity know what lurks around them. Every time you pass through that railway station, cultivate your anger and avow to get justice, come what may!

Don’t let the killers go scot free. Shame them. Shame their families. Shame their promoters. Shame their protectors. Those who are still silent, let them know what Bhagat Kabir said, “Jo padosi ke huha so apne bhi jaan.” -what has happened unto your neighbour can happen to you as well. Beware!

Yours in grief

Jagmohan Singh
Editor, World Sikh News