How Bijnor Didn’t Become Another Muzaffarnagar

It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday night. Barring a handful who were catching a late show at the only multiplex in the vicinity, dining out or downing the shutters of their shops, most had turned in for the night. The road that runs down Civil Lines wore a deserted look, apart from a few bikers who drew up near a slim, long-haired person in a t-shirt and jeans. Most whizzed past; one slowed down and turned back to take a long, hard look before speeding away.

Perhaps, he was curious. Or maybe, the ‘eve-teasing’ never happened because the biker was thrown off by the mere presence of said person. In a public place. At that hour. To be fair, this could have happened anywhere in India, and not necessarily north of the Vindhyas. This particular incident, though, took place in a small town in Uttar Pradesh, some 150 kilometres north-east of the national capital.

Ordinarily, Bijnor might take exception to the “small town” label. After all, the headquarters of the eponymous district is, owing to its population of over a lakh, a city in administrative terms. For now, though, it has bigger fish to fry. Months before India’s most populous state goes to polls, the area has been in the grip of tension due to clashes between two communities that resulted in three deaths. The root cause, just like in case of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots was ‘eve-teasing’. A strange euphemism for sexual harassment in a subcontinent not particularly associated with the Bible.

There are countless versions of what happened on the morning of Friday, September 16, in Pedda village, four kilometres from Bijnor on the national highway to Pauri, Garhwal, where sugarcane fields have started giving way to automobile dealerships and residential colonies of an ever-expanding district headquarter. Details like the number, religion and address of the girls harassed on their way to school change depending on who you ask — the victims, accused, administration, police or politicians. While the investigation is still underway, a somewhat clear picture has emerged.

What really transpired?

Sometime between 7 and 7.30am, 18-year-old Talib, a resident of Pedda, went to drop his 16-year-old cousin Yasmin, a 10th standard student, to her school in Bijnor on his bike. When they reached the highway, a group of Jat boys passed a remark. Everyone in this group was from Pedda, with the exception of Tillu who was from the neighbouring village of Nayagaon, who had come to open his uncle Kunwar Sen’s cement shop. “She (Yasmin) said she’s getting late for school, so he (Talib) did not initially respond to the comments,” said Mohammad Furkan, 35, who lost two of his brothers in the incident that followed.

When Talib returned, he was stopped by the group of Jat boys. A scuffle ensued, in which more villagers from Pedda joined in. Meanwhile, Kunwar Sen, a resident of Bijnor, returning after buying milk, tried to intervene but was roughed up. Seeing his nephew Tillu in the fight, he contacted Nagender, a yoga teacher with alleged links to Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Nagender called Aishwarya Choudhary, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker, who in turn called Arun Kawadi, a local businessman with an interest in real estate.

The involvement of people associated with RSS and BJP was established using a video in possession with the police, as well as call detail records (CDRs). “In the video, Kawadi and his gunner Sonu are seen arriving in Choudhary’s car, carrying weapons,” a policeman told Newslaundry on condition of anonymity. “While Choudhary’s face is not visible in the video, his location at that time was traced using CDRs to Pedda.”

Choudhary, incidentally, is a BJP ticket hopeful — hoardings of him wishing people on the occasion of Independence Day (but not Eid) can be seen across Bijnor, from Ganga Barrage Road to Police Lines. On the other hand, Kawadi allegedly has his eye on a property situated on the highway in Pedda. “From what we know so far, he was trying to get some land for a dirt cheap rate, if not free,” said the policeman.

On their way to Pedda, Choudhary, Kawadi and Co had mobilised villagers from Nayagaon and Kachhpura. By the time they arrived, the initial skirmish had been resolved, and both parties had gone home. The second round was deadly — the new arrivals climbed on the roofs of the Jat houses; while both sides pelted bricks, guns were trained on Furkan’s family members, who were eating breakfast at the time and were taken by surprise.

Of six brothers, three had passed away earlier — two of natural causes, one after being struck by lightning. That morning,— Aneesuddin, 45, and the differently-abled Ehsan, 26 — were killed, leaving Furkan as the family’s oldest surviving male member. His 17-year-old nephew, Sarfaraz, also succumbed to the bullets. Over a dozen were injured; among those was a one-year-old. “My younger brother’s wife begged, ‘Chacha, please don’t shoot!’, but was shot through her hand,” recalled Furkan, who works at a hair salon in Delhi’s Pahar Ganj, and had come home for Eid-ul-Adha.

So had Mohammad Rizwan, who hails from Mandaura village, also in Bijnor district, and had dropped by to meet his in-laws. He is back in Delhi, but not in a way he would have hoped— having suffered serious injuries in the gunfire, Rizwan was transported to Jai Prakash Narayan Apex Trauma Center of All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Some reports, such as this one in India Today and this one in Aaj Tak, incorrectly stated that a fourth person had died. “They assumed that Rizwan had succumbed to his injuries,” said an official of the district administration. “Thankfully, no one from the local media printed any figures without consulting us.”

Eight days after the massacre, the blood on the floor had dried and changed from crimson to a shade of black. Evidence of the bullets dent the walls, but not as much as they scar the minds of the survivors. That the attack happened a mere three days after Bakr-Eid came as an even bigger shock. “Everyone had come over to eat,” said Furkan, adding there has always been communal harmony in Pedda. “When there were riots in Bijnor (in 1990), Hindus and Muslims guarded the village together.”

Bonhomie is the only point on which there is some sort of consensus in the village, but that’s firmly in the past now. What remains is a vitiated atmosphere that will take a long time to limp back to normalcy. For now, an uneasy calm hangs over the unpainted, single-storey dwellings. A lone man in khaki sits outside the victims’ house. Those of the accused are guarded by multiple Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) personnel, ostensibly to prevent retaliatory attacks.

According to the accused’s families, the fight was between Pedda’s Muslims and Nayagaon’s Jats, both sides pelted bricks and fired bullets, and the Muslims murdered and injured their own just to get monetary compensation. “They killed the old and infirm, and wounded the rest,” said Sarvesh, whose husband Sansar Singh has been arrested and son Nitin is absconding. “Maybe one or two were genuinely hurt, but how come everyone is in the hospital?”

The sentiment was echoed across the street. “Two died in front of us, but they killed the third and injured their own just for the money,” said the wife of Tikam Singh, who along with his 32-year-old son Kailash have been arrested. Four more members of the extended family have been named in the First Investigation Report (FIR). “They have also named a minor from our family who was not here but in Tisotra village when the incident happened.”

The versions of the accused’s families have several contradictions, though. While Sarvesh claimed Pedda’s Muslim boys harassed a Jat girl from Nayagaon, Tikam’s family said no girl was involved, as did the family of Rajpal Singh, who was arrested along with his two sons and two nephews. The direction in which the Muslims allegedly fired their weapons was also disputed.

Crucially, there were no bullet marks on the wall of Sansar’s house. Shoorveer Singh, Uttar Pradesh state president of the Akhil Bharatiya Jat Mahasabha who led a five-member delegation to Pedda two days after the clashes, has a theory: “The Muslims fired in the air, after which the Jats shot at them.” As for the weapons, Singh’s son said all the Jats had licensed weapons procured for “self-defence”, while all the Muslims had tamanche (locally made guns). Dr Ompal Singh Deshmukh of the Akhil Bhartiya Jat Aarakshan Sangharsh Samiti said the Muslims might have accidentally shot their own. “Jats only had one or two weapons,” he said. “They (Muslims) were firing blindly from dozens of tamanche, which have a very limited range.”

Incredulous as it sounds, a variation of this narrative was accepted by media organisations from the Hindustan Times to the Dainik Jagran. The latter has since removed the report from its website, but here is a screenshot obtained using Google cache:

Politicisation of violence

The crowd that gathered at Pedda leading to the attack on Furkan’s family included at least three people in khaki clothing. Two of them — a sub-inspector and a constable — were from a local police station and has since been suspended for dereliction of duty. Furkan alleged that the policemen also shot at their house, but the police official Newslaundry spoke to said it was a dismissed forest guard. “That said, it is rather suspicious that uniformed policemen were present in the village at such an early hour,” said the official. 

While the immediate response was not particularly prompt, senior police officials, including Onkar Singh, Deputy Inspector General (DIG) of Moradabad Range, reached the spot within a few hours. By around 2pm, Daljeet Singh Chawdhary, Additional Director General, Law and Order (ADG/L&O), and Debasish Panda, Principal Secretary of UP’s home department, had come over from Lucknow. Meanwhile, in order to stop rumours from spreading on social media, the District Magistrate, Jagat Raj ordered suspension of internet services.

The administrative machinery learnt from the infamous Muzaffarnagar riots. The same, however, cannot be said about the politicians. While families of the accused said the area’s Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA), Ruchi Veera of Samajwadi Party (SP), did not approach them to get their version of what transpired, and the victim’s family alleged Kunwar Bhartendra Singh, BJP’s Member of Parliament (MP) from Bijnor, never came to meet them.

For Furkan, this reeks of discrimination that starts at the top. “(Prime Minister Narendra) Modiji says, ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas‘, but his MPs only come to meet their people,” he said. “Wasn’t it the MP’s duty to meet us? Didn’t we vote for Modiji? Would he have become PM if Muslims didn’t vote for him?” Pretty soon, the anger was about the role of Muslims in an independent India. “Hindustan is as much ours as theirs,” he said. “Our forefathers have also made sacrifices (for the country).”

Here again, the district administration stepped up, banning the entry of politicians in Pedda. Asaduddin Owaisi of All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) had to cancel his tour of the village. Rumours of an event by Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi turned out to be just that. There was heavy deployment of PAC and police personnel eight days after the clash when Newslaundry visited the area.

It is not hard to see which party will benefit as a result of this polarisation. During the 2014 Bijnor bypolls, necessitated as a result of sitting MLA Bhartendra Singh’s election to the Lok Sabha, a chunk of the Jat vote shifted to SP, helping Veera win. Due to the Pedda incident, the Jats are likely to gravitate back to BJP. Shoorveer Singh admitted as much, even as he blamed Veera for creating a false narrative. “Pedda’s Muslim girls don’t go to school,” he said. “Those lies were spread by Veera to corner the Muslim vote.”

Of course, the tremors of Pedda will be felt elsewhere, too. Bijnor district has 55 percent Hindus and 43 percent Muslims. Jats, who make up around 14 percent of the population, own most of the farmland but are concentrated in the rural areas. Urban Muslims, in majority in 21 out of the district’s 26 towns according to the 2011 census, are mostly involved in trade. Many rural Muslims, like Furkan and his family, belong to backward classes like dhobis and work as labourers and house painters. Bijnor’s Scheduled Caste population is around 21 percent.

Of the district’s eight assembly segments, four are currently with Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), three (including Bijnor) with SP and one (Noorpur) with BJP. By politicising the clash, both BJP and SP stand to benefit — the former, by cornering the Hindu vote, including a fraction of the Dalit vote; the latter, by regaining the Muslim votes it lost to BSP. The transfer of votes might have a bearing on who comes to power in UP early next year — according to an opinion poll whose results were made known a day after the Pedda incident, a hung assembly with BSP as the single largest party is likely. In such a scenario, an SP-BJP post-poll alliance might have the numbers and cannot be ruled out.

For now, it’s an all-too-familiar narrative — if Shoorveer Singh is to be believed, there is love jihad (“Bijnor’s Muslim boys marry girls from Delhi and Chandigarh on the pretext of love, adopt Hinduism but convert to Islam upon return”), palayan (“there is an exodus of Hindu families from Muslim-majority areas to safer havens within the district”) and good old population panic.

On Friday, exactly a week after the clashes, Bijnor’s Superintendent of Police Umesh Kumar Srivastava was packed off to 27th battalion PAC Sitapur, showing how proactive the UP government is being, while appeasing Hindus who accused him of conducting a “one-sided investigation”. The following day, there was a sarv samaj sammelan — a meeting of district heads of bodies representing various Hindu communities including Jats, Rajputs, Sainis and Balmikis — at a hotel opposite New Tehsil on Ganga Barrage Road.

If that sounds eerily like the mahapanchayat during the Muzaffarnagar riots, — sources say permission to host one in Bijnor on October 2 has been denied. Sadly, the veneer of peaceful coexistence has been ripped off. For years, the district has been proud of its religious harmony. The three adjoining Ms — Meerut, Moradabad, Muzaffarnagar — have a history of communal violence. Not Bijnor, denizens say. So what if there are crowds of young men with saffron flags in Muslim-dominated localities shouting “Hindustan mein rehna hai toh Vande Mataram bolna hoga (If you want to stay in India, you have to say Vande Mataram)” even as the men in khaki watch on? They are not rioting. And 1990? That was just a blip on the radar. Now there are two.

Full disclosure: the slim, long-haired person in a t-shirt and jeans was your correspondent, who can always chop his hair off if the male gaze gets too uncomfortable. For millions of Indians, including the women of Bijnor, hair length is the least of their worries.