Ghaziabad violence: Locals blame outsiders

Four days after violence in Dasana and Masuri areas of Ghaziabad, over desecration of religious text, life is now beginning to come back to normalcy. With no fresh violence reported from the area, the shopkeepers opened their shops and locals moved around to purchase essentials. 

 

The local residents venturing outside after the curfew was relaxed expressed shock over the incident and blamed outsiders for the violence in the area thathad not witnessed a single communal clash since Indipendence. 

 

District Magistrate Aparna Upadhyay said, “Situation is under control as no incidence of violence has been reported in the area after Friday. Curfew has been relaxed between 11am to 4pm, we will monitor the situation for another couple of more days before deciding to remove curfew completely.”

 

Replying on a query on the cause of death of six people during the violence she said, “It is a matter of investigation and we can’t say anything until investigation is complete.”

 

On Friday evening, violence broke out at Masuri Police Station, Dasana and Masuri Tiraha area after alleged desecration of holy book Quran. Protestors had gone on rampage, fired bullets at policemen and set a barrack and vehicles on fire. Six persons were killed and 12 injured during the violence.

 

Huge number of police personals and PAC has been deployed in the sensitive areas such as Loni, Sahibabad, Kailabatta and Murad Nagar among others to bring the situation under control. 

 

However, people are still living under shock and waiting for things to be normal again. Protesters not only attacked the police station but also looted some shops and restaurants in the area.

 

Hari Ram, whose restaurant was looted on Friday night, said, “The mob came running towards my shop around 7:30 pm that day, and we escaped after jumping the wall behind the restaurant to save our lives. They ransacked entire shop, broke the furniture and fridge and did not even leave a penny here.”

 

“I am completely surprised to see such thing happening in our area. In my entire life not a single communal clash took place here. Those who spurred tension in the area were not from here, they were outsiders,” added the septuagenarian.

 

Though a section of people claimed that shops belonging to one community were looted, but that was not corroborated with reality in the area. On Monday, Sabir Ali, who closed down his mobile repairing shop on Friday after the protest turned violent, found his shop ransacked by the mob.

 

Cursing the hooligans, Sabir Ali said, “They were not from Masuri. Be it Hindu, Muslim or Dalit, all have lived here peacefully for generations. Outsiders did not like the peace and brotherhood among us and did all this to disturb that.”

 

While most of the shops remained closed in the area and only medical stores, paan shops and tea shops were open on Monday. Pramod Kumar, a local shopkeeper said, “People here who never saw such things happening in the area are stilling living under fear. I have been running this shop for more than 50 years and have never witnessed violence in the area. I pray that such violence should never happen anywhere in the country.”

 

Sharing similar views Mohammad Salim, during a friendly chat with Hari Ram mentioned earlier said, “This was the specialty of Masuri that we never had communal clashes. If a boy from our community teases a girl of other community, instead of fighting, we beat the boy and maintain peace with each other. The outsider who came and spurred tensions in the area did not like that and have tarnished the image of Masuri in the whole country.”

 

Although Masuri station officer P K Singh, Local Inteligence Unit (LIU) SSI Jal Singh Saini and SI D P Singh have been suspended for not being able to control the situation and a high-level probe is on, this incident has once again raised questions on the government’s ability to handle law and order situation in the state.