Ahmedabad Rural

Abasna 
Kuha 
Por 
Dailol

Abasna

There was a ghastly incident in Abasna village, Detaroj taluka, of Ahmedabad districton the night of April 1 and 2, (i.e., on the eve of Prime Minister Vajpayee’s visit to Gujarat)when 5 family members of the Ghanchi family living there were brutally hacked to deathin their sleep. Ibrahim Ismailbhai Ghanchi (38), who lost his father, Ismailbhai (56), hisbrother Karim (22), his uncle, Dawoodbhai (53) and his cousins, Noor Jahan (22) andDeen Mohammed (17), deposed before the Tribunal on May 4. Another uncle who wasinjured was admitted to the hospital but he died the day before the witness’ deposition.Ibrahim Ghanchi lost six family members in one brutal attack. The witness, who lived atKalol, and was an employee of the ONGC, had served in the Indian army for 17 years.His family had lived in the village of Abasna for generations, and owned 45 acres of landthere. This was the lone extended Muslim family in the village (three nuclear families andone joint family) — living among Patels, Rajputs, Darbars and Brahmins.

Soon after the Godhra incident, fearing trouble, the family had shifted to Kalol fora whole month. At that time, the same people who later killed members of his familyhad come and persuaded his father to return to the village. The family returned toAbasna on March 31, and they were attacked at midnight on April 2-3. A group ofvillagers led by Metaji Diwanji Darbar, first slaughtered the unsuspecting victims andthen burnt them as well as the house. His mother and his aunt sustained injuries butmanaged to escape through the back door. The sarpanch called the police at Sarkhej,Ahmedabad and DSP Rai, DySP Ravi Patel, inspector Rajni Patel and PI Chauhantook the injured to hospital.

The witness’ mother had a deep gash on her forehead and had also got a fracture. Hisuncle, who later succumbed to his injuries, had a cut on his head, a fractured skull andarm, as well as a sword wound on the neck. The witness was informed of the ghastlyincident while on duty at Kalol. He went to the police station in Kalol, and took policeprotection to go to Abasna. There, he saw his father’s corpse lying at the entrance to theirhome. A post-mortem examination had already been done right there. Then the policetook him to the house, which was burnt, and he saw the other corpses. The witness tookthe corpses to the cemetery on the highway and buried them according to Muslim custom.The next day he went to the Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad where he met his aunt.On the fourth day, he returned to Abasna, collected what was left of their possessionsand returned to Ahmedabad.

The witness said that Sandesh carried a story after the ghastly massacre, saying thatIsmail and Dawood — the witness’ father and uncle — were killed because they hadbeen harassing girls. The witness was outraged at such irresponsible reporting, whichtried blatantly to suggest that this was a case of personal vendetta and had nothing todo with communalism. The witness was angry that his father and uncle, who had beenkilled, were being maligned thus. He said that they were a well-respected family. Theyhad lived in the village for 250 years. The witness’ mother was a member of the localpanchayat. The witness asked, pertinently, whether the villagers would have allowedthem, the only Muslim family, to stay in Abasna for so long, whether his motherwould have been allowed to continue as a member of the panchayat, if family mem-bers had behaved as suggested in Sandesh?

The witness stated that his plight was pitiful, that at present he could not even votesince all his papers had been destroyed in the fire. He had no proof that he had servedin the army. He said that, in future, he might even be accused of being a terrorist sincehe had virtually no proof of prior existence. He had retired from the army and hefeared that if he applied for a new job, he might be told that he could not get onebecause he was a Muslim.

The witness told the Tribunal that the journal Communalism Combat had arranged to takehim to Delhi, where he had met the President of India on April 27. He had spoken to thePresident about his 17-year-service in the army, of which 13 had been spent in the field.He said that he had asked for President’s rule to be imposed in Gujarat. He said that 45acres of family property in Abasna was at stake and that his children’s schooling was now endangered since the same forces of venom were targeting schools as well and that it wasnot safe for him to return to his village, where the family home had been burnt. The policearrested about 25 persons — the main culprit being Metaji Diwanji Darbar, who had ledpeople into several criminal actions in the past. Other villagers had also filed FIRs detail-ing the facts about this incident and naming the accused.

Kuha

The first instance of communal attack on the 50-odd Muslims in Kuha village,Daskroi taluka, had occurred in 1992. They were pelted with stones and they hadbeen forced to leave the village. The 300 families of Patels were in the forefront ofthat attack. At the time, most of the Muslims in Kuha worked as labourers whileabout 4-5 families owned a small patch of land. But over the years, some of themhave set up small kiosks and others earn a living as drivers.

Around 1 p.m. on February 28, , a mob led by the husband of the sarpanch, a Patel,attacked the Muslim houses. There are 2 major castes in the village, Patels and Thakors,but Thakors did not participate in the attack. As the attack started, most Muslims fledto the fields, while some others took refuge in the house of a panchayat member,Laxmiben Dabhi. Ahmed Husain Sayyed was unable to flee in time, and he hid in hishouse. He was thus witness to all that happened in Kuha, where 19 Muslim houseswere burnt and belongings looted from the rest.

The Muslims stayed in the fields for 9 days, and through all these days, LaxmibenDabhi organised food for them. Once it was safe to move, the people organised twovehicles and reached the relief camp at Bapunagar in Ahmedabad city. A complaintwas given to the police but a copy, acknowledging receipt, was not provided to thecomplainants. Nor was a copy of the panchnama provided. Ahmed Hussain and histwo brothers used the visit of the NHRC team as an opportunity to get their com-plaint filed.

On 13 April, Laxmiben came to the Bapunagar relief camp as an emissary of theHindus of the village, to make a deal with the Muslim families: They should withdrawthe complaint in which they had named the assailants and only then were they wel-come to come back to reside in the village. The three brothers, who had officiallycomplained, were not to be permitted into the village. Ahmed Hussain stated thatalthough he wished to bring the guilty to justice, if other Muslim were to tell him towithdraw the complaint due to pressure from the villagers, he would do so.

Por

Por village, Gandhinagar taluka, Gandhinagar district, has about 70 Muslim fami-lies and about 500-600 families of Thakors, Patels, Harijans, Bagris, Ravals andChamars. The deputy sarpanch of the village was a Muslim. Muslims had supportedThakors in the last panchayat election.On February 28, the sarpanch told the Muslims of the village that they need notworry, nothing would happen to Muslims in this village. On March 1, at about 2.15 p.m., just after theafternoon prayers, a large mob from at least 9 neighbouring villages and led by Patels from Por, attacked theMuslims. They were armed with kerosene,diesel and gas cylinders. They destroyed and burnt Muslim houses, a mosque as wellas the dargah. A bore-well, which was the only source of water for Muslim houses andfields, was completely destroyed. The mob also attacked and injured a number ofpersons, including Shakinaben, Hanifbhai and Fatimabibi. Village shopkeepers pro-vided kersosene to the attackers and the Patels of the village, including women, peltedstones on the fleeing Muslims. The attackers caught hold of the maulana and beat himup. The police inspector from Adalaj police station, PI Jhala reached the village shortlyafter the mob arrived, but instead of helping the local Muslims, he ordered them toleave immediately.

The collector IS Haider, and the DDO Brahmbhatt, reached the village while theattack was still in progress. They offered the Muslims protection, and helped themescape by getting onto the 3 tempos owned by the Muslim villagers themselves.However, the third tempo did not start. In panic, people got down from that tempoand clambered onto the other 2 tempos. Three women, who had already sustainedinjuries during the attack, and 3 children died due to suffocation. They were dead bythe time the tempos reached Adalaj police station.

Only one FIR was lodged in the Por village incident (no. 44/2002 in Adalaj PSu/s 147/148/149/436/395/135 Bombay Police Act). The same PI Jhala, who haddone nothing to prevent the attack, lodged this FIR. Since he was also the investigat-ing officer into the incident, the victims had little hope of an unbiased investigation.The FIR did not contain the names of the attackers.

Later, the witnesses named 95 Patels in the 4 complaints that they gave to the PSand other authorities. In spite of this, not a single Patel had been arrested until mid-April. There had been at least 23 arrests in the case but all of people belonging tolower caste Thakkars, Vaghris, and Rawals, who were involved in the looting after theMuslims had fled but were not the actual attackers. The villagers had also sent com-plaints and appealed to numerous higher authorities but had not received any re-sponse. The displaced victims were living in the Mandali relief camp, or with relativesat various other places.

PI Jhala was directly indicted for conniving with the attackers, by not taking anyaction at the time of attack, by leaving out the attackers’ names in the FIR and later,for joining the attackers in pressurising the victims to withdraw their complaint.

In terms of intensity and scale of violence, this district, along with Dahod andMehsana, apart from Ahmedabad city, experienced the most systematic and grue-some attacks. Atleast 400 of the 1200 villages in this district were brutally targeted.It seemed that the design was to choose those villages where Muslims were in arelatively small percentage, isolate them and attack them. The killings were of agruesome nature.The Tribunal recorded detailed evidence from this district.

Dailol

A total of 368 Muslims were residents of Dailol village, in Panchmahal district,which had about 60 Muslim households and about 500-600 Hindu households. Dailolvillage is located at a distance of about 5 km from Kalol taluka town. On March 1,Muslims who were escaping from Dailol and surrounding villages, were attacked by a5-6,000 strong mob. (The assaults had started a day earlier.) A total of 38 personswere burnt alive. The testimony of a maulana who witnessed the slaughter as he hidin the nearby jungle, has been put on the records of the Tribunal. There is no Mus-lim living in the village now, so it is very difficult to get full details on this incident.Innocent and terrorised members of a family were trying to escape on foot whenthey were attacked at Dailol station. An elderly survivor of the family recountedthe sorry tale in his testimony, which was placed before the Tribunal. At about 10a.m. on February 28, 2002, a crowd of about 2,000-3,000, most of them outsiders,attacked, looted, burnt and destroyed the masjid, shops and establishments belong-ing to Dailol Muslims, and left at 4 p.m. Later, that night, one Ismailbhai was draggedout of his house by a crowd that included people from his own village, paradedthrough the village twice, wearing a garland of shoes and asked to say ‘Jai ShriRam’. When he refused, he was doused with kerosene and burnt to death in theearly hours of the morning. The Gujarat state cabinet minister and BJP MLA,Prabhatsingh Chauhan was involved in the attack. At 10 a.m. on March 1, a largemob of about 3000-4000 again came to the village shouting, “Today is Bharat Bandh – drivethe Muslims out, hack them, kill them!”