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Inside Mewat, where biryani raids, gangrapes and murder scarred Eid

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Anand Kochukudy
Anand KochukudySep 16, 2016 | 21:53

Inside Mewat, where biryani raids, gangrapes and murder scarred Eid

Early morning on September 11, as we halted our vehicle to ask for directions at a junction in Gurgaon, a couple of men from Haryana Police, more loyal than the king, swiftly approached and shouted at us to move the wagon quickly as "CM Khattar saab is on his way". We were on our way to Mewat, or Nuh as the disrict is officially known, to try and find out more about the biryani raids and a double murder, as well as a double gang rape in Dhingerhedi of Tavaru.

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A local points out that the biryani sellers were making a lot of money and that jealousy might have played a part in the ensuing events. Photo credit: Representational/PTI

Mewat is possibly the least-developed district in Haryana with the literacy rate of 56 per cent and a sex ratio of 913 girls to 1,000 boys. And almost 75 per cent of the population is made up of Muslims. The district was carved out of Gurgaon in 2005, but still looks like any Tehsil dustbowl in Western Uttar Pradesh.

The news of Biryani raids first appeared in the Times of India on September 7 and, coincidentally, it was on the same day that the gang rape survivors had addressed the press conference in Delhi. Before travelling to the Firozpur Jhirka stretch and Doha village where the Biryani raids had been carried out, we felt that it was more important to learn everything about the Dhingerheri catastrophe.

On the intervening night of August 24-25, at around 1 PM, a gang broke into the house of Ibrahim, a local. There were 12 members in the house, including an infant at the time and the members of the gang murdered Ibrahim and his wife Rashidan. They gang-raped his nieces, a 20-year-old and a 14-year-old, and grievously injured other members, including the teen's father Jafrudin, his wife Ayesha and two of their sons.  

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The police did not initially register a case till almost five hours of reaching the spot and hastily took the traumatised victims to the magistrate to record a 164-page statement, in gross violation of the law, as the post mortem was yet to be completed. While relevant sections weren't invoked in the FIR, pressure mounted by the civil society and community leaders in the area ensured the sections of murder and attempt to murder were added.

Four of the perpetrators were rounded up by the police and later identified by the victims, and three of them belonged to a neighbouring village. One of the four accused identifies himself as a volunteer of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) on his Facebook page, while another one had the post "Ab Muslim to gye" with a picture of the prime minister on his page.

On September 1, a Mahapanchayat of the "36 biradris" (a euphemism for all the communities living in an area in Haryana) was called at the Anaj Mandi in Tavaru to take stock of the situation. It was attended by the MLAs of the adjoining constituencies and former ministers hailing from the region, among others - an estimated 20,000 people were part of this congregation, and the district bar council was authorised to further deal with this issue.  There was a lot of anger among the people against the police for their omissions and deficient investigation.

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After serving an "ultimatum" to the state government, an eleven-member team including legislators and members of the district bar association left for Chandigarh on September 7 to meet the CM. Their memorandum had demands, including handing over of the case to the CBI and raising the compensation for the victims to 50 lakh.

The chief minister of Haryana agreed to hand over the case to the CBI and met most of the demands in the memorandum.

It is learnt that there was no unanimity among the representatives on meeting with the chief minister. On the same day, Ramzan Chaudhary, an advocate cum social worker whose wife was in contact with the gang rape survivors, arranged for them to travel to Delhi and address a press conference. This happened without the knowledge of the district bar association of Mewat.

The revelation of one of the survivors in the press conference that the perpetrators had asked her whether she consumed cow meat before raping her created a flutter as that charge was not in the public domain till then.

An advocate, who was part of the delegation that met the CM on September 7, told us on the condition of anonymity that he believed that the survivors were tutored to say this at the press conference to sensationalise the case. But advocate Ramzan Chaudhary denies this flatly, though he admits to miscommunication with the delegation that met the chief minister and also the bar association.

The resultant confusion caused some tensions and a gag order was imposed on the victims' families as they were shifted to an undisclosed location and prevented from appearing in front of the media. This resulted in the media not getting access to the survivors till a decision regarding the matter was taken after consultations with all the stakeholders.

Despite our best efforts on Sunday, and despite having a female athlete hailing from Tavaru as part of our team, we weren't able to meet the survivors or the immediate family members. We were told that even a news crew was unable to meet them just a day prior to that. A few members of their family are still being treated at AIIMS in New Delhi.

On the same day, we also attended a meeting organised by a group of well-educated Muslim youth in Gandhi Park in Nuh, where many of them vented their ire at the community leaders for "betraying" them and also vowed to engage more on social media and build pressure, apart from taking out candle vigils. The seniors reiterated that the "Ganga Jamuni Tehzeeb" in the area must be maintained at all costs. There was palpable anger that the biryani raids were gaining more prominence than the horrific events at Dhingerheri.

On Monday, September 12, it was finally decided at a bar council meeting that there was no merit in withholding access or keeping the media away in this case as that would only complicate matters. A press conference was also hastily arranged in the evening on the same day, at the District headquarters in Nuh, where the survivors addressed the media and repeated everything they had said at the press conference in Delhi.  

September 13, Tuesday, was Bakr-Eid. But a Mahapanchayat was already scheduled for the day by the Hindu communities in the area, especially the Ahirs. Three of the four arrested for the crime are Ahirs and they claimed that their boys were being framed.

A lot of communally motivated allegations and repeated assertions of the innocence of their "kids" was made. They also demanded the CBI enquiry be commenced only after the accused were released on bail. Even some of the parents of the accused were present in the meeting that had people from more than 100 villages from the nearby areas and lasted more than three hours.

On the Biryani trail

Next on our agenda was to get to the bottom of the raids conducted on the biryani vendors in the Firozpur Jhirka stretch, especially near the village Doha that borders Alwar district of Rajasthan.

We learned that the matter has been simmering for more than three months now, unlike what had been reported in the media. We also met diverse groups of people from Doha. The biryani vendors claimed that the sarpanch who lodged the first complaint on the sale of beef biryani in the area was motivated by politics.

Mohammad Yusuf Qureshi, 55, owner of a biryani stall, claimed the problems erupted after most of the biryani-selling Qureshis supported the losing candidate in the panchayat election. Sarpanch Rubiya, and her father-in-law Haji Shah, made it a point to call a panchayat in the village to ask them to give up selling beef biryani.

While the vendors did not abide by it, a complaint was filed at Firozpur Jhirka police station. Haji Shah, the de facto Sarpanch of Doha claimed that not so long ago, cows were being smuggled into the area and slaughtered. He asserted that he was only interested in maintainining peace and "bhaichara" in the area and denied having ulterior motives.

Many among the Qureshis, who are traditionally engaged in the meat trade, used to work in slaughter houses and a lone factory in the area till a few days ago. Since they do not own land, they switched to selling biryani to truckers on the Alwar-Gurgaon highway and the business flourished over the years. When BJP came to power in Haryana, the law on cow slaughter was made more draconian and the people here claim that problems began soon after that.

There is yet another subplot. Mewat's Muslims are mostly made up of Meo Muslims. They are supposed to be a mix of Rajputs and other castes and follow practices of "Gotra" and do not marry within their families and clan, unlike regular Muslims. They also observe many traditions of the other communities in the area, including those followed by the Ahirs, the Gujjars, the Meenas and the Jats. And like these other pastoral communities and tribes, they too are mostly agriculturists and rear milch breeds. And despite being the place of origin of the Tablighi Jamaat, the Muslims of the area are - by and large - more liberal and the community's women don't wear veils. The Meo Muslims own land and have done better than the other castes among Muslims in the area though literacy rates among all the Muslims here are uniformly dismal.

Rehman, a fruit seller from the adjoining village, pointed out that the biryani sellers were making a lot of money and that jealousy might have played a part in the ensuing events. A couple of years ago, Mewat was in the news for gangs of youth engaged in extortion, smuggling and theft. It would be worthwhile for the administration to check what purpose pushing more and more youth into a state of joblesslessness in these underdeveloped areas will serve.

Bakrid

Tension prevailed in these areas and nearby villages on the day of Bakrid. Despite trying our luck with more than 30 biryani vendors, we couldn't find any "Bade Ka Gosht" or beef (buffalo) biryani. This was a result of the raids conducted in the area in the past few days. Seven samples picked up from these areas just ten days ago are supposed to have tested positive for cow meat.

But there have been allegations that proper methods and rules were not followed while collecting these samples, and it also emerged that the lab at the Lala Lajpat Rai veterinary and animal sciences university in Hissar, where the meat samples were tested, was authorised just two days prior to the samples being sent there.

We asked those eating at the outlets if they preferred Beef Biryani to Chicken Biryani. Most said they enjoyed the former as they got bigger pieces and their taste buds were conditioned to the flavour. And the vendors said that though the rates of chicken had gone down considerably in these weeks, it would be tough to make a profit selling biryani once the prices went up. As for beef, it seems nobody would dare to sell beef biryani in this part of the world in the coming years. And it might not be long before the Tablighi jamaat manages to get some traction in these areas in the search for identities and livelihood.

Last updated: September 16, 2016 | 21:55
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