Diaries of Destruction
Documenting violence and its aftermath in northeastern Delhi
photographs by Ishan Tankha text by Maya Palit
01 April, 2020
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"text": "17 MARCH Shakir Ali and Yasmeen’s newly renovated home, which faces a drain in Shiv Vihar, lies destroyed. The mob destroyed the house room by room, and broke the entire wall on the first floor.",
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"text": "25 FEBRUARY A resident of New Jaffrabad looks out of her house and watches the commotion as a young man named Md Shahrukh—who appeared to have a pellet-gun injury on\nhis face—is rushed, on a scooter, to a local doctor. Along with him was another young man with what appeared to be a pellet injury to his thigh.",
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"text": "25 FEBRUARY Residents of Jaffrabad and New Jaffrabad face off with the police. The police had been present at the spot since the morning and had occupied a position between the Muslim groups near the Jaffrabad metro station and the Hindu groups closer to the Maujpur-Baburpur metro station. According to the photographer Ishan Tankha, “things remained tense with sloganeering and small-scale arson, photographers were also stuck in this no mans land and things remained like that until about 4 pm when suddenly multiple shots rang out.” He added, “I was inside the New Jaffradbad colony, when a young man, who was semi- conscious, was brought with what appeared to be pellet shots to his eyes and face. The tension escalated, as the police wanted to clear the road and the anti-CAA protest site at Jaffrabad and moved towards the latter, resulting in a tense confrontation that was contained with the help of locals.”",
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"text": "25 FEBRUARY Residents of Jaffrabad and New Jaffrabad face off with the police. The police had been present at the spot since the morning and had occupied a position between the Muslim groups near the Jaffrabad metro station and the Hindu groups closer to the Maujpur-Baburpur metro station. According to the photographer Ishan Tankha, “things remained tense with sloganeering and small-scale arson, photographers were also stuck in this no mans land and things remained like that until about 4 pm when suddenly multiple shots rang out.” He added, “I was inside the New Jaffradbad colony, when a young man, who was semi- conscious, was brought with what appeared to be pellet shots to his eyes and face. The tension escalated, as the police wanted to clear the road and the anti-CAA protest site at Jaffrabad and moved towards the latter, resulting in a tense confrontation that was contained with the help of locals.”",
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"text": "26 FEBRUARY Delhi police personnel watch as a fireman tries to put out a fire in the tyre market at Gokalpuri. Several shops were destroyed in the violence.",
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"text": "1. 28 FEBRUARY A wall, with a mausoleum painted on it, lies destroyed along a drain in Shiv Vihar. A family used to live in front of the wall.",
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"text": "3.Chand Bagh",
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"text": "4. 28 FEBRUARY An idol of the Hindu god Ganesh lies on top of a burnt car, in what was formerly a parking lot used by locals, on Brijpuri Marg, Karawal Nagar.",
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"text": "5. Shiv Vihar",
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"text": "6. DRP Convent Public School, Shiv Vihar",
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"text": "The body of Ankit Sharma, a former Intelligence Bureau officer and local resident, being taken out of a drain in Khajuri Khas Extension.",
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"text": "A television-news reporter does a piece to camera, showing the rooftop of the former AAP councillor Tahir Hussain’s building in Khajuri Khas Extension. On the previous day, there had been violence in the area, while the house was shuttered. The rooftop and different floors of the building, which was under construction, contained what resembled Molotov cocktails, packets of yellow-coloured liquid (that were alleged by media reporters to be packets of acid), rubble, stones and slingshots placed at different points. Tankha said he “smelled at least ten small bottles, which had pieces of cloth and a yellowish liquid and they didn’t smell of petrol or diesel but faintly of kerosene.” Most roofs visible from Hussain’s rooftop (his building was the tallest in the area) also had rubble and stones strewn across them. ",
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"text": "The building had remained closed the previous day, while security forces marched below. It was found opened the next day and was flooded with reporters and camerapersons, and the police made no attempt to cordon off the space.",
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"text": "A man urges the security forces to rush towards the Meena Masjid in Bhagirathi Vihar, where an angry Hindu crowd was screaming at journalists attempting to reach the destroyed mosque.",
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"text": "Muslim residents fleeing Bhagirathi Vihar, near Meena Masjid—a mosque that was destroyed—for their safety. The scared locals had been waiting to leave from the night of 25 February, and claimed that despite the presence of police, there was violence even the next morning. Some had been waiting to cross the street towards Old Mustafabad, a majority-Muslim area that seemed to them to be somewhat safer.",
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"text": "3 MARCH ",
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"text": "A man leaves his home in Shiv Vihar. Days after the violence ended, he returned to the empty house to see what he could salvage.",
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"text": "Muslims praying on the roof of Farooqia Masjid in Mustafabad on the first Friday after the violence. The mosque had been torched.",
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"text": "3 MARCH ",
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"text": "A man crawls under the makeshift barricades in Shiv Vihar that had been set up during the violence. The barricades remained for days, creating artificial borders between communities and neighbours.",
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"text": "26 FEBRUARY ",
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"text": "The peaceful sit-in protest site at Chand Bagh lies destroyed after violence in the area began two days prior. ",
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"text": "A child’s chair lies in a burnt first-floor room in Shiv Vihar. The house belonged to a couple, Sabra and her husband Md Salim. It was completely destroyed. “The first floor was occupied by tenants, a couple with their one- and-a-half-year-old baby girl,” Sabra said. “We had to hide on the roof for quite some time and only managed to escape later. What they couldn’t loot they burnt.”",
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"text": "A child’s chair lies in a burnt first-floor room in Shiv Vihar. The house belonged to a couple, Sabra and her husband Md Salim. It was completely destroyed. “The first floor was occupied by tenants, a couple with their one- and-a-half-year-old baby girl,” Sabra said. “We had to hide on the roof for quite some time and only managed to escape later. What they couldn’t loot they burnt.”",
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"text": "3 MARCH ",
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"text": "An auto driver named Shamshad told Tankha, “I managed to escape before the violence began properly and also saved my auto, but now I have so much to do to fix this place that I can’t even go out and work. There are people coming every day from the government and different organisations. If I’m not here how will I receive any help?”",
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"text": "3 MARCH ",
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"text": "Asif Saikia, a resident of Shiv Vihar, showed Tankha his voter card to prove he used to have a beard. “I cut my beard off because I was nervous about going to Assam,” he said. “I’m originally from Dibrugarh, so I had to go check whether my name was on the final NRC list and I thought it was better to not look Muslim. I’ve lived in Delhi for 40 years now,” he added, speaking to Tankha as he sat outside his looted and ransacked home in Shiv Vihar. He said his name was not in the final NRC list.",
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"text": "28 FEBRUARY ",
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"text": "The burnt Auliya Masjid in Shiv Vihar, which a mob attacked with gas cylinders.",
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"text": "29 FEBRUARY ",
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"text": "The funeral procession of Amir Khan, a father of two who was in his early thirties, and Hashim Ali, who was in his late teenaged years, being taken for burial in Mustafabad. The brothers were killed as they attempted to return home during the violence. Their mother, Asgari, and sisters were inconsolable outside their home as they waited for the bodies to be brought out.",
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} IN FEBRUARY, swathes of northeastern Delhi witnessed large-scale and targeted violence, looting and arson that lasted around four days. According to the last official death toll—53 dead, many more injured, and scores of people fleeing their homes.
It is still unclear precisely what sparked the violence. On 23 February, the Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kapil Mishra, had visited Babarpur, accompanied by people whom he claimed were Citizenship (Amendment) Act supporters, and gave an incendiary speech. In it, he gave an ultimatum to the police to clear out an anti-CAA protest at Jaffrabad within three days: he would wait till after the departure of the US president Donald Trump, he said, and after that, would take matters into his own hands.
Soon after, on that day, armed Hindu mobs targeted Muslim neighbourhoods in northeastern Delhi, including in areas ruled by the BJP, such as Maujpur and Vijay Park. By the next day, Hindu mobs were singling out and torching mosques as well as Muslim houses and shops. The reports that emerged pointed to multiple incidents of arson: 14 mosques and a Sufi dargah were burnt, while saffron flags were placed on top of mosques in certain neighbourhoods, such as Ashok Nagar and Gokalpuri.
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