Malegaon: “Living hell” Thanks to Promotional Posting of Police

The Tata Institute of Social Sciences has done a commendable job that was long overdue. It submitted a report on the backwardness of Muslims in Malegaon. On September 9, 2006 many bereaved families of those killed in the bomb attacks on the previous day refused the cheques from Sonia Gandhi for one cardinal reason. They were upset that their near and dear ones were killed in the bomb blasts, some of them could have been saved if adequate medical help was available in the town of Malegaon. The hospitals were in appalling conditions and so were the roads and transportation. They had demanded improvement in all these fields in 2001 and also in 2006. But there was no change in the situation. The 2008 bomb blasts put the town on the front page of news reports around the world. The Sachchar Commission recommendations also fell on deaf ears.
At long last the National Minorities Commission asked an independent organization the Tata Institute of Social Sciences to undertake a survey. It meticulously gathered enough details to the effect that indeed 60 % people are below poverty line. What is even worse the Muslims live such an abominable life that the reports calls it “living hell”. The condition is as squalid as Gaza strip. The sitting MLA Mufti Ismail was disheartened to see women easing themselves around public open space. He had promised to construct toilets for them. This also went in vain. The most visible show of abomination is the Id prayer ground of Millat. It is enclosed by walls on four sides which border on two ladies madrasa as well. Even in broad day light men and shockingly women defenselessly brazen by everyday call of nature sit for toilet in full view of the people on the roads! Some years back the police on duty there pleaded with women of the neighbourhood to avoid the open space for the mufti was going to pray for rain there. The rains of course came but never the toilets.
The concluding part of the report by TISS is more horrendous as it touches upon dumping of ‘acid’ on the minds of the people and marring their life for good. Surprisingly no other than the police have played this role. They crave for plum posting in the town for the fast buck that is assured to them plus official promotion. All this comes with a tag: “They (police) depict and create conflict-like situation and then manage that in order to prove that they are better administrators and so they deserve promotions.” (IE March 24, 2012) This is best illustrated in the meteoric rise of superintendant of police Rajwardhan. He was posted at Malegaon from 1997 to 2001. Then he was transferred. But on October 26, 2001 a riot started. It was caused by a police man tearing a pamphlet distributed by Muslims near the central mosque. The situation could have been controlled by nipping the unruly behavior and violence in the bud. But a standoff was made to develop protractedly and Rajwardhan was called back to handle and control the situation. Far from doing his duty he let the situation fester communally for almost a month with curfew enforced in the town. The police also let migration of Muslims from nearly two hundred villages affected by the riots to take place without hindrance or control by the police. The police did hardly anything to improve the law and order situation in villages.
Rajwardhan was promoted and went to the district place Nasik. Then happened the first bomb blasts of 2006 and he was again recalled as the expert. Instead of arresting the real bombers he arrested the innocent Muslims and extracted confession under torture. He was again promoted and made deputy commissioner of police in a part of Mumbai and then transferred to Foreign Service. It was around this time that Hemant Karkare the new chief of Anti Terrorism Squad exposed details which are really shocking. The full extent of the evil effect of what the police under him did will pale into insignificance the Wikileaks of Louis Assange.
Justice Srikrishna Iyer has remarked that if the police do not control a riot within fifteen days then there is something fishy about it. Rajwardhan was neck deep into it.
There was arms seizure in the second week of May 2006. The police arrested Mohammad Javed. He was the eldest son of Majid Master. Majid was a primary school teacher somewhere in Pilkhod, Khandesh. His profession was the sources of not only his livelihood but the élan in his life. He would teach with rare dedication and gusto that is hardly seen in others. He would take out his pupils to excursion and enjoy time with them telling stories, singing songs and nursing them up with the joy of life that is more or less the raison d’ etre of Shantiniketan rather than the arid Khandesh. There was also full rapport of the family, the teacher and the students.
He lost this idyllic life thanks to the shoddy behavior of the police. They were looking for one Mohammad involved in the arms haul case. The eldest son of Majid had the first name Mohammad. That clicked it. The police told Majid that whether it is Javed or Zahid his having Mohammad was enough. Neither the Students Islamic Movement of India activists then nor till today have had anything to do with arms haul as far as Malegaon is concerned. Mohammad Javed’s younger brother Mohammad Zahid was the imam of a mosque in Phoolsanghvi in Yawatmal. He was leading prayer on Friday on September 8, 2006 and he too was arrested for allegedly being a member of SIMI. The police had no proof either against him or his brother. Zahid was released from prison after five years in 2011 but Javed is still languishing in prison. The judge trying the case of the arms haul came down heavily against the police when they tried to bring witnesses to court who so obviously contradicted their own statements that the judge lost patience with them. He not only ordered them out but warned the police. Since then the case is in abeyance.
Its effect on Majid is disastrous. He remembers his favourite elder son with a fondness that is heart wrenching. He cannot swallow a morsel of food without recalling Javed. Majid has become schizophrenic. For him life has stopped with the arrests of his two sons. He had warned Zahid not to hobnob with the activists of SIMI. He says that SIMI was in the bad books of the government. The court proved that Zahid was not involved and so granted him bail proving his father wrong. But in the course of time Majid lost interest in teaching and in life. He not only had forbidden Zahid from visiting his house but refused to see him on his release! His face did not betray any joy except grave reserve and anger and melancholic look and dark skepticism. All these not only etched in the creases of his face but underlined every aspect when he utters words.
Other victims of police opportunism have even more gory tale to tell. In direct contrast to the astronomical amount of money police showered on Abrar and his father in law and wife (At one time he had 65000 rupees, along with a motor cycle and his father in law nearly 30 lakh rupees and also flats in Mumbai and Bhiwandi, all given to them from the police and through Rajwardhan) there are others who lost their relatives and suffered abysmally. Mohammad Amin was a youth killed in the bomb blasts. His mother Shamsunnisa and sister Saeeda worked hard and so did he. They earned money to have a decent place for a house so rare in Malegaon what with a tamarind tree that grew through the house thanks to the love of Amin. They had tiled floor, a toilet and a bath room. They also kept the house clean. The death of Amin removed a steady source of income but his death also deprived the family of far more vital connections and support.
Shamsunnisha’s husband collected the three lakh rupees that Sonia Gandhi paid as well as the money that came from Hyderbad and also the sum that Abu Azmi paid. He stopped paying even whatever little he used to give because his wife started taking grocery from the neighbouring grocery shop. The grocer was a decent person and shared the grief of the loss of the family. He let Shamsunnisa have what she needed and let her pay when she would. Her husband blamed her for illicit affair with him in exchange of the grocery. He even beat her and abused her occasionally and then finally deserted her. Her second son would hawk around the town and collect hundred and fifty rupees at the most of which about forty rupees would be his earning.
Shamsunnisa had heard that her husband Mustak Ahmed had collected money and had simply disappeared. Elder members of the community there advised him to have joint account so that his wife would run the house with the relief. He not only ignored them but gave all the money to his daughter from his first wife. Shamsunnisa had only heard about his having another wife. He never even mentioned it once. Once she demanded money to buy school books for the children and rice for the family he became so irate that he took out a strap and beat her up. His second son tried to shield his mother but he threw him away. Another time when she demanded part of the money he had received he took out the spindle iron rod of the spinning wheel and was going to stab her. His daughter Saeeda came in between and pulled him away. He roared as if the heaven had fallen on him and shouted that his daughter had attacked him and tore his shirt. He also falsely accused his wife of providing her father with the money she and her children earned.
The four to five lakh rupees changed the fate of Shamsunnisa. It turned her husband violent and a brute. In her share of ‘grapes of wrath’ also fell slanderous accusation of adultery, faithlessness, disobedience and ingratitude, demonizing and degrading. All these stigmas branded into her flesh as well as in her mind and the common fate of the family on whose account?
The author John Steinbeck would have written another novel had he met Sattar of Malegaon. The novelist often wrote about the working class people whose life was interchangeable with the life of animals in hardship and struggle for survival, as in the famous novels The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. Sattar was born with weakened eyes that also squinted and constantly rolled around in the sockets. His wife and mother both were killed in the blasts and now he was the poor Tom of the town. They had gone to the graveyard to beg food and alms. Since their death he had no family. He received three lakh rupees for his wife and equal amount for his mother. He did not trust his negihbours and feared that they would steal his money. They would inveigle him into giving money to them. But he mistrusted them. He and Majid Master became the mad King Lear out in the snow storm. Majid had his wife but his crazed brain on the issue of his son Zahid had unhinged his mind. Sattar had none. The neighbours thought him crazed and his desire for a wife of no avail. They also forsook him.
Among those who had solidarity in the family but suffered seriously Anis Kalejiwala is one. He would buy organs of the animals after slaughter. Cut them to small size and mix spices and chilli and broil them on skewer and sell at Mushawarat chowk. His four wheeler cart was next to the new cycle with the bomb fitted in it. The bomb broke his bone in his leg and shrapnel entered his legs and made life truly hell on earth. He received one lakh rupees from the government which his family spent on travelling with him to nearby district town of Dhulia for treatment and buying him medicine. Then they spent their own money.
Before the blast he would collect the animal organs for about 200 rupees and then sell the pieces for the whole day. That would fetch him 50 to 75 rupees a day. His earning went to maintaining a large family including a crippled sister, two other sisters who could not marry and one abandoned sister by her husband. Her two sons also lived with Anis while Anis’s father was nearly blind and could not do any work. His two brothers had ten children each and lived in the same narrow house near Mushawarat chowk. The floor and walls of the house were damp and septic.
Bedridden for months together he had broils on his back and around his legs filled with yellowing puss. That made him groan with pain. His wife would clean his toilet and wipe the oozing from the wounds. That made his mother cry that it would have been better that he had died! The balls and nails that had entered his body were so difficult to remove for the doctor! His mother had heard that some people were gifted money even when they had not suffered injuries, the police manipulated that, she claimed. She tartly said that the blasts ‘opened their lottery’ wile for others the blasts opened their graves! (After the Bomb Blasts: Malegaon. Nilu Damle, 2008) However there was no end to their travail as her family made 500 boxes of cardboard and earned just forty five rupees to eke out existence from day to day.
For others it evinced to the public how they were turned first generation beggars. They were so terribly shy that they strove strenuously to hide their slide into the slough of penury. One such was the mother of Sajida (8). Sajida’s father had walked out of the house five years ago. He never returned and left half a dozen children and his wife to fend for themselves. Only Sajida’s elder brother got some money while he worked on power loom at night and slept during the day. The mother of the girl, Shahida, claims that she and her daughter were passing the gate of the graveyard when the bomb exploded. She did not know what it was. When she came to consciousness her daughter was not with her. She said that she and her daughter were going to her father’s house when it happened. When Sajida was not found she said that she believed that she must have gone to her maternal uncle’s house. Then the dead body of the girl was brought to the house. The mother was adamant that the people were lying that she had gone to beg alms at the mosque on the holy day of Shabebarat. She was another schizophrenic in denying that she was a beggar and wanted the neighbours to accept what she wanted reality to be. That she was not a beggar! The first bomb attacks in Malegaon brought forth what most of the people were no better than.