As India counts dead, brutality of Hindu-Muslim riot emerges
By SHEIKH SAALIQ 29/2/2020

1 of 11
In this Friday, Feb. 28, 2020 photo, paramedics tend to the wounds of Mehfooz Umar at Al-Hind hospital in Old Mustafabad neighborhood of New Delhi, India. As the Mustafabad neighborhood of India's capital broke out in brutal communal riots for three days this week, the Al-Hind Hospital turned from a community clinic into a trauma ward. Authorities haven't said what sparked the violence that has left more than 40 dead and hundreds injured, but it was the culmination of growing tensions since the passage of a citizenship law in December that fast-tracks naturalization for some religious minorities from neighboring countries but not Muslims. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri)

NEW DELHI (AP) — The wounded came in waves. First in ones and twos, limping up the steps and staggering through the aluminum doors, and then in wheelbarrows, with bleeding skulls and stabbed necks. Finally, the motorcycles and auto-rickshaws arrived, their seats stained with the blood of as many as they could hold.

As the Mustafabad neighborhood of India’s capital was ravaged by communal riots for three days this week, the Al-Hind Hospital turned from a community clinic into a trauma ward.

Doctors like M.A. Anwar were for the first time dealing with injuries such as gunshot wounds, crushed skulls and torn genitals.


“I wanted to cry and scream,” he recalled. “Something inside of me died during those three days.”

Almost a week after the clashes between Hindus and Muslims began, a clearer picture of the horrors inflicted during New Delhi’s worst communal riots in decades has begun to emerge.

On the eve of President Donald Trump’s first state visit to India last Sunday, Hindus and Muslims in the Indian capital charged at each other with homemade guns and crude weapons, leaving the streets where the rioting occurred resembling a war zone, with houses, shops, mosques, schools and vehicles up in flames. At least 42 people were killed and hundreds more wounded.

Authorities have struggled to identify some of the bodies because of the gruesomeness of the injuries.

While both sides behaved brutally, most of the victims were Muslim.

Authorities haven’t given an official account of what sparked the riots, though the violence appeared to be a culmination of growing tensions that followed the passage of a new citizenship law in December.

The law fast-tracks naturalization for some religious minorities from neighboring countries but not Muslims. Opponents say it violates India’s secular constitution, and further marginalizes the 200 million Muslims in this Hindu-majority nation of 1.4 billion people.

The law spurred massive protests across India that left at least 23 dead.

But what unfolded in Mustafabad this week was far more brutal, with mobs hacking individuals with swords, burning people alive and bludgeoning people to death.

A Hindu intelligence bureau officer was repeatedly stabbed and his dead body thrown into a sewage drain that divides Hindu and Muslim residential areas. A Muslim man had his legs spread so far apart that the lower half of his body tore. His condition remained critical.


Questions have been raised about the role of the New Delhi police and whether they stood by while the violence raged or even aided the Hindu mobs.

A New Delhi police spokesman, Anil Mittal, denied that police had aided rioters.

Al-Hind hospital’s doctors said authorities kept ambulances from reaching certain riot-hit places.

A little after midnight on Wednesday — more than 72 hours after the violence began — a New Delhi High Court passed an extraordinary order directing the police to provide safe passage for ambulances.

It was too late for many victims.

With streets taken over by the mobs and no way through for ambulances, Anwar knew early on that his clinic would soon be overcome with wounded.

Some slumped in plastic chairs as they draped gunshot-riddled arms and legs over tables.

Others just lay on the floor, bleeding.

Those who were there described the blood and chaos, but also shared oddly uplifting stories of teamwork and grit.

“We didn’t sleep. We didn’t eat anything. All we wanted to do was save lives. And we did,” said Aanis Mohammad, a volunteer at the clinic. “No patient of any religion was turned away.”

By mid-afternoon Wednesday as the violence came to an end, Anwar and his overwhelmed colleagues had treated more than 400 people and referred almost 100 to larger hospitals. Dozens, however, remained at the clinic in critical condition.

The hospital also gave refuge to those fleeing the violence, providing more than 50 people with food, bedding and safety.

Clean-up efforts in Mustafabad are underway but the scars are still visible.

At Guru Teg Bahadur hospital along New Delhi’s eastern border, 18-year-old Salman Ansari waited for his father’s body to be handed over.

Ansari’s father had gone out to collect scrap for money as there was no food in the house. After seeing police assurances on the news, he thought it would be safe. It wasn’t.

Ansari said he was sleeping when two strangers dumped his father outside their home early Wednesday.

He carted his father 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) on the family’s rickshaw to a private clinic. The doctors demanded 5,000 rupees ($69). His pockets were empty.

By the time Ansari managed to reach a public hospital, his father was dead.

For Anwar, the doctor, he said he eventually grew numb to the carnage. Yet he’s still coming to grips with how fellow Indians could do what they did to one another.

“It’s as if evil had pervaded and housed itself in the hearts of the mob,” he said.

___ Associated Press writer Aniruddha Ghosal contributed to thisTOPICS

Thousands of Bangladeshi Muslims protest India violence

February 28, 2020

1 of 3
Bangladeshis protest against the communal violence in New Delhi, after Friday prayers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, Feb. 28, 2020. Authorities have not said what sparked the riots, the worst communal violence in New Delhi in decades, as the the toll continued to rise. The protestors also raised slogans against the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is scheduled to visit Bangladesh in mid-March. Poster reads "Your religion allows the destruction of mosques, my religion prohibits destroying temples." (AP Photo/Al-emrun Garjon)

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Several thousand Muslims marched from the main mosque in Bangladesh’s capital on Friday to denounce India’s government for allegedly inflaming tensions between Hindus and Muslims, leading to clashes that left at least 40 dead and hundreds injured.

After Friday prayers, thousands of Muslims left the Baitul Mokarram Mosque in Dhaka and joined the rally, chanting slogans against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

They threw shows at posters of Modi and burned a portrait of him. Many of the protesters carried banners saying, “Stop killing Muslims” and “Save Indian Muslims.”

The protesters also demanded that Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina cancel a plan to invite Modi to a commemoration next month of the 100th anniversary of the birth of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Rahman, Hasina’s father, led a political movement that created the separate nation of Bangladesh after a nine-month war with what is now Pakistan in 1971.

“I ask the prime minister to immediately cancel Narendra Modi’s invitation,” Nur Hossain Kasemi of the influential Islamist group Hefazat-e-Islam told the protesters. “If she fails to do so, the people of the country will be forced to take action and surround the airport. They will build resistance.”


Bangladeshis protest against the communal violence in New Delhi, after Friday prayers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, Feb. 28, 2020. Authorities have not said what sparked the riots, the worst communal violence in New Delhi in decades, as the the toll continued to rise. The protestors also raised slogans against the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who is scheduled to visit Bangladesh in mid-March. Poster reads "Bangladeshis do not want terrorist Modi to come here." (AP Photo/Al-emrun Garjon)

But he asked Bangladeshi Muslims not to harm Hindus.

“I remind the Muslims of our country that we believe in harmony. We don’t believe in violence. We shall not harm any non-Muslims in this country,” he said.

Tensions in India between Hindu hard-liners and Muslims protesting the Modi government’s Hindu-first policies have been building for months. Violence exploded in parts of New Delhi on Sunday night, the eve of U.S. President Donald Trump’s first state visit to India.

Hindus and Muslims attacked each other with guns and swords, metal rods and axes, leaving the streets where the three days of rioting occurred resembling a war

Bangladeshis beat a poster with a caricature of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a protest against the communal violence in New Delhi, after Friday prayers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Friday, Feb. 28, 2020. Authorities have not said what sparked the riots, the worst communal violence in New Delhi in decades, as the the toll continued to rise. The protestors also raised slogans against the visit of Modi who is scheduled to visit Bangladesh in mid-March. (AP Photo/Al-emrun Garjon)
AP