By Our Correspondent
JAIPUR – Close on the heels of communal tension in Rajasthan’s Udaipur city, the Bharatiya Janata Party government has demolished the rented house of a minor Muslim boy who had allegedly stabbed his classmate in a government school in the city. After the government declared that the house was constructed illegally on the Forest Department’s land, an evacuation notice was sent to the family on August 17 morning, and the house was razed by the afternoon.
While the Udaipur city is limping back to normalcy, there is a widespread outrage against the government’s “bulldozer justice” on the lines of similar action in Uttar Pradesh. Right wing groups associated with the BJP and RSS vitiated the atmosphere in Udaipur and indulged in large-scale arson, in which the cars at a Muslim-owned garage were set on fire and the shops of Muslims were ransacked. The miscreants also gathered outside some mosques and a dargah and raised provocative slogans, while trying to storm into them.
The communal tension erupted on August 16 after a fight between two students of class X in the Government Senior Secondary School at Bhatiyani Chauhatta in the Walled City. One of them, who happened to be a Muslim, allegedly stabbed the other with a knife in his thigh. When the injured 15-year-old boy was rushed to Maharana Bhupal Government Hospital, members of the Hindu right wing outfits gathered in the city’s Madhuban area and indulged in arson and violence.
Prohibitory orders banning the assembly of people were clamped in Udaipur after the protesters indulged in large-scale violence and pelted stones at several localities in the city. The Muslim boy who had allegedly stabbed the victim and fled the scene was detained under the Juvenile Justice Act and his father was arrested. The father’s arrest seemed to be unwarranted, as he had no role in the alleged incident and the specifics of the charges against him remained unclear.
The injured boy is at present admitted to Maharana Bhupal Hospital’s intensive care unit, where his condition is stated to be stable. Udaipur MP Manna Lal Rawat, Udaipur City MLA Tarachand Jain, Udaipur Rural MLA Phool Singh Meena and BJP leader Pramod Samar were among those who reached the hospital to enquire about the boy’s condition. A team of three specialist doctors from Jaipur has also arrived at the hospital for monitoring his treatment.
All the government and private schools in Udaipur have been closed since August 16 and the mobile internet services have been suspended, as the administration has found it difficult to control the exchange of social media messages with false information and provocative contents. Members of the Udaipur Bar Association formed a “human chain” outside the district courts complex to protest against the incident.
The Muslim boy’s house was vacated and its electricity connection was cut after the notice was served on the family. Though the notice gave three days to the family to vacate the house, the demolition started by noon with two bulldozers brought in a joint operation of the Forest Department and Udaipur Municipal Corporation.
A heavy police force was deployed in the Muslim-dominated residential locality, as a large number of people gathered on the spot and had an altercation with the officials during the demolition. It later emerged that the family was staying as tenants in the house for several years and its owner was one of their relatives. The house had three rooms, a kitchen and a shop in the basement.
In a video that circulated soon after the demolition, a man who identified himself as the landlord of the house said there were four other families in the house and all of them were asked to vacate. “The family of the boy is now living at their relative’s place,” the man, Rashid Khan, is heard saying in the video. “Why is the administration demolishing my house? I went to the Municipal Corporation but everyone is on leave. I went to the police station but they refused to stop the demolition. This is an injustice towards me. I have lost my house without any fault of mine,” Khan said.
The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) has taken strong exception to the “bulldozer justice” meted out to the Muslim boy’s family, while describing the BJP government’s action of razing the house as illegal, communal and discriminatory. The “pick and choose” approach of the State authorities was in blatant violation of fundamental rights and the principles of natural justice, according to the PUCL.
“There are more than 200 houses constructed in the locality, but only the family of the juvenile in conflict with law was targeted by the authorities to satisfy the power lust of certain miscreants who benefit from such communal tensions,” PUCL president Kavita Srivastava said. Besides, the friends and relatives were denying shelter to the dispossessed family members for fear of action by the police.
The PUCL has sought an urgent intervention of the Rajasthan High Court’s Chief Justice in the matter through suo motu cognizance, saying the isolated offence was being given a communal colour only because the boy concerned was from the Muslim community and the victim was a Hindu. “No law permits the authorities to act in such a cruel manner. Even the Supreme Court sternly criticised this practice of bulldozer justice when such incidents were reported from Uttar Pradesh,” Ms. Srivastava said in a letter petition addressed to the Chief Justice, M.M. Shrivastava.
“The dispossessed innocent persons have no other place to reside and all the friends and relatives are denying shelter to them on account of severe apprehension of such illegal and discriminatory action in the event of giving them shelter. This action of the state is nothing less than goonda raj which will make the existence of courts of law irrelevant,” the PUCL’s letter petition stated.
The PUCL sought a transitional shelter to the dispossessed family, payment of compensation for the demolition and strict legal action against the officers who ordered the razing of their house. The PUCL stated that the investigation in the criminal case should be monitored by the High Court, as the Udaipur police and administration had shown their “extreme bias” against the accused even before the investigation.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has also condemned the attempts to turn a fight between two school children into a communal incident, while accusing the BJP of conspiring to target the minority community. CPI(M) State Secretary and Sikar MP Amra Ram said the act of demolition of the Muslim boy’s house had revealed the BJP’s “cheap mentality” to get political mileage by raising communal passions.
