Zafarul-Islam Khan, the former chairperson of the Delhi Minorities Commission, has been under continued police scrutiny following the anti-Muslim violence that swept the national capital in February this year. In end April, the Delhi Police special cell registered an FIR against the 72-year-old Khan for sedition, two days after he posted on social media thanking the Kuwait government for “standing with Indian Muslims.” This did not prevent him from indicting the Delhi Police and Bharatiya Janata Party leaders in a fact-finding report into the violence. The findings were submitted in July by a ten-member committee constituted by the Delhi Minorities Commission.
Khan’s term as the chairperson ended in August, but it did not mark the end of the action against him. On 29 October, the National Investigation Agency conducted raids at Khan’s home and office. According to him, the officials had showed him an order linking his NGO with “Kashmir terror.” He denied these allegations, before adding, “It seems an attempt to implicate me in some terror or riot case.”
In August this year, Sagar, a staff writer with The Caravan, interviewed Khan about his findings on the Delhi violence and the recommendations in his report. In particular, they discussed the case of Faisal Farooq, the owner of Rajdhani Public Senior Secondary School in northeast Delhi’s Shiv Vihar area. In a chargesheet filed in June, the Delhi Police accused Farooq and others of hatching a conspiracy to “precipitate and aggravate riots, in and around Rajdhani School.” The police accused Farooq of providing the school as a “base for rioters,” and having links with “fundamentalist Muslim clerics.” He was granted bail by a Delhi sessions court in June, but on 2 November, the Delhi High Court judge Suresh Kumar Kait cancelled Farooq’s bail.
Khan discussed eyewitness testimonies from his visits to the Rajdhani school which clearly contradicted the police’s narrative. Pulling no punches, Khan said the Delhi Police could easily determine the truth if it so chose, but that it was instead acting under instructions to fulfil a false narrative.
Sagar: When you went to Rajdhani Public School and visited the Shiv Vihar area after the riots, what testimonies did the eyewitnesses give you?
Zafarul-Islam Khan: On 2 March, we went for an official visit. I was there, our member Kartar Singh Kochhar sahab was there, and there were other members from our advisory committees—around twenty to thirty people—and there were police officials as well—around thirty or forty, including a senior officer. We went like this just in case if there’s any attack or anything, we would be protected, since the violence had just happened.
We saw Rajdhani School, we saw the adjacent DRP school. The driver [employed by] Rajdhani school—and I want to make it clear that he was Hindu—he told us that these people entered the school. He described them, they were young fellows of around 20–25 years of age, they were well-built and their faces were covered with helmets. They entered Rajdhani School first, which was open, and they went up and used a catapult—a big one, you would have seen the video of it. Some of them stayed there, and others used a thick rope to enter the adjacent school and open the gate, and their associates entered that school as well. If there were about a hundred people in Rajdhani, and about one thousand to fifteen hundred were in the other school. They came on the night of 24 February, and stayed for over twenty-four hours. According to what the driver said, they used to leave in small trucks, break things, conduct riots and then return. They’d eat, take rest and leave again. This was their routine.
After that, we went to DRP school, the adjacent one. The guard over there told us—he was Hindu too—that he closely saw the people who came. He said those people would have killed him, so he and his wife, who lived there, ran away through the back.
Then we went further ahead to this is one Arun school, owned by Mr Bhushan Sharma who used to be an MLA. He told us the same thing and also gave us a photo from his CCTV camera. The rioters had come in the camera, they had entered the buildings, caused a lot of destruction, and looted things like computer hardware, and even ripped off the steel railings—we had seen it, it had been ripped off. So we took the photo and returned to Rajdhani school and DRP school to ask if they were the same people, and they confirmed that it was the same people.
Amid this, there was no mention of those people being Muslims, or that the owner of Rajdhani school had brought them. As per our conversation with them—and we were there the whole day—the rioters had come from outside. They did not know where they came from, but they were outsiders, they weren’t locals. They stayed, did what they came to do, and left in their small trucks.
Now, there is a new narrative being projected. [Khan was referring to the Delhi Police’s chargesheet in the Rajdhani school case.] Until 2 March, this narrative did not exist in the area. You can tell why this has been done—many such things have surfaced in the media, in the courts, in the chargesheets, from which it is clear that the narrative is being coloured in a particular manner.
It’s not that we just went on that one day. Ever since 24 February, we had been in communication with the people there, we were receiving WhatsApp messages and SOS calls, so we had a lot of interaction with them and information about the situation. People were brought from outside, and they were trained individuals—they knew how to set things on fire and cause destruction. First, they would loot and then set fires, and if the fires weren’t enough, they’d use gas cylinders to cause an explosion. We saw many houses where the buildings were completely destroyed on the inside. Even the walls suffered damage, the first floor was destroyed, and so was the roof. Even if the structure was standing the insides were destroyed. We saw this in houses, garages, offices, shops and mosques—all of them showing the same pattern of damage.
The locals themselves told us that the first thing the rioters did would be to loot what they could and put it on fire, and the second thing they did was to set fires. Not only that, they also knew which property belonged to whom. If it was owned by a Hindu, they would only loot and not set it on fire, and if the property was owned by a Muslim, they would set it on fire.
S: So they must have had local assistance, someone to tell them?
ZIK: Yes, we learnt that even though most people were from the outside, but a few were insiders who were helping them. It’s not like they would have just found out on the spot. It takes research. Consider what happened in Gujarat, in the 2002 riots. Lists had been prepared. VHP members have confessed to all this. That they had prepared the lists from earlier, from the municipality records and other records, and made these lists. This had been planned many days in advance, it could not have happened in one day. The reality was that they wanted to end the anti-CAA, anti-NRC protests. It was a warning, “If you do this, this is the punishment in store—we’ll burn your houses, your stores, we will kill you.”
In a way, this is what they were doing to teach a lesson to those in Shaheen Bagh and the hundreds of other Shaheen Baghs. To this end, [the BJP leader] Kapil Mishra went there on 23 February and threatened them, with the DCP [the deputy commissioner of police for North East Delhi, Ved Prakash Surya] standing next to him. This was part of their entire planning, and it couldn’t have happened suddenly. They must have known for a while what had to be done. So people were brought, the work was done, and now the entire narrative is being changed. The poor labourers whose houses, shops and garages were burnt, now they are the ones being caught.
As time passes, many things will come forward. But there are many people who have died, whose family members and friends have died, no one will be around to heal their wounds.
S: The same people you spoke to—the driver and the guard from the schools—told the Delhi Police that the rioters were raising slogans and were Muslims with Faisal’s support.
ZIK: On 2 March, we spent a lot of time in these three schools and no one said anything like what you just described. These eyewitnesses—the driver of Rajdhani school is an eyewitness, the guard at DRP school is an eyewitness, and Mr Sharma, the owner, who may not be an eyewitness but would have been told, and who gave us the CCTV photo—these people never said anything regarding these slogans or that the people were Muslims. If they were Muslims, they would have had beards or skull caps, or something to suggest they were Muslims. They said none of this at the time. All of this has all been made up later, I don’t see any truth in it.
S: Is this an effort to target the community?
ZIK: They are being made to do this, it’s not that they are doing it on their own. I won’t say much more than this but they are being made to do it. This is work they were given. At the time the riots were taking place, on 24 February, the locals told us that the police were saying that they had not received any orders. They were either with the rioters or just standing there, and some did try to help—all three kinds of officers were there.
So this conspiracy had been present since that very day. The officers probably knew what was to be done, and the rioters were saying, “Yeh andar ki baat hai, police humaare saath hai” [This is the inside information, the police are with us]. There are so many videos of this, where rioters are lynching, beating people up, walking around with tridents and swords—there are so many videos of all this. These videos would have been available of the other people as well [referring to the Muslim community], but I’ve not come across any such videos. There’s one video of Shahrukh holding the pistol. If you just take out one photo and show it, it doesn’t clarify anything. I learnt that on that very day his house had been attacked. If my house was attacked, I would also be mentally unstable.
S: Are they selective in their investigation, and in presenting their facts and witnesses?
ZIK: When they have a motive, then it isn’t difficult to pursue it. Their motive is not to reach the truth. You have to arrive at the truth, that is the only way you can prevent such things from happening. But you won’t look for the truth, you will whitewash everything. The people who did this, the ones who planned it, executed, stood in the streets and attacked people, identifying people and hitting them. So many people told us that the rioters were looking at everyone’s Aadhar cards—if he’s a Muslim, beat them, if he’s not, leave him. This was happening in the streets across the whole neighbourhood. So this new thing that they are saying, it’s a conspiracy—earlier there was a conspiracy to commit the violence, and now there’s a new conspiracy to give it a new spin.
Any government who does this isn’t faithful. The government’s motive should be to ensure that the violence and riots are not repeated. This is why the government is formed, this is why it came to power, this is why they swear an oath on the Constitution—to maintain law and order and abide by the Constitution. But the opposite is happening.
S: Faisal’s father had given a statement that the police came and recorded the statements of the school’s teachers, but none of those are in the chargesheet.
ZIK: That must be so because those testimonies weren’t fitting their narrative. If it were fitting, they would have used the statements, and whatever did not fit, they discarded.
S: So they made up a story earlier and—
ZIK: Worked towards proving that, yes. They have to get these statements, and if there is no such statement, they’ll get it through fear, intimidation, money and any other means—by torturing them, by threatening to implicate them and put their name in the case. So people’s resolve tends to weaken and they agree, “Okay, I’ll do whatever you say.”
S: Many lawyers who are fighting the riots cases have said that this is the first time they are seeing a chargesheet in which the investigating agency is setting a narrative, and that this is not the job of the investigating agency.
ZIK: Even the judges have said that their seems to be a clear direction to this investigation. A session court judge has said this—that it is one sided. Anyone with some sense can understand that this narrative is being built through the collection of specific evidence. I don’t think this is a good thing for any community, society. Justice should be given, whomever it concerns.
S: You had recommended the constitution of a judicial commission in the report.
ZIK: We did. We were a fact-finding committee and we had done our work, but it isn’t binding. Even a judicial commission’s recommendations aren’t binding, but it has more power. Even though our fact-finding committee is also a statutory body, it does not have the same stature of a proper judicial commission. And there should be a judicial commission because these were big riots, in the capital, and during a high-level state visit from the president of America. All these things happening are something to think about. How can this happen—the capital was under high security and yet these riots happened, it is no small thing. It is imperative to determine the truth, and until we arrive at the truth, we are not on any correct path. This is the wrong path.
S: When you told the government officially that there should be a judicial commission, what response did you get?
ZIK: I don’t know. My office sent it, but my term is over. They may have gotten a response but I do not know, since I would not get a response in my personal capacity. It would have gone to the office in the official capacity.
S: It’s also possible that people mobilised under some leadership. People arrived in trucks and occupied places—it is possible that someone was planning and handling things.
ZIK: If they want, they could have easily procured the footage and determine where people came from, since it’s not just Delhi but all of India has so many CCTV cameras. When around thousand people come from the outside, they do not drop down from the sky. They come from somewhere, from some route. They must have passed tolls. When they entered Delhi streets also there would have been CCTV cameras. There are so many informers in every neighbourhood who could tell you. But all this is only possible when you have pure intentions. You can see the mobile call records, to see who came from the outside and left within 24 hours. You can tell who came in the last 24 hours, you can see who came from Baghpat or Loni—that’s what people say, I am just saying it—you can find out who are the people who came and who was here on 24 and 25 February. It is quite easy.
S: In the chargesheet, there was a new thing that I have not seen before. They sought a data dump directly from the mobile towers. They went to the mobile company first, got the numbers present in the area, and began calling them one by one to say that your location was here so you were also involved.
ZIK: Everything is happening in an upside down fashion—this is just another example of that.
S: The problem that has arisen because of this is that the police accused people of being present in a riot area, and the people are simply responding that their homes are in that area. So they are effectively turning the victims into the accused.
ZIK: People walk around to get things, medicines or whatever reason that a person would step out, and then they say that your photo is in the CCTV footage. If I leave every day, my photo will be there every day. This is all forced evidence that is being created, but if they find out what outsiders came and stayed, it will be so easy to narrow down the accused through CCTV footage. If they had the intention to do so, they could discover all of this, but I can see that they do not have any such intention.
This interview has been edited and condensed.