Rubina was visiting her home for the first time in nearly a week. On February 25, a neighbour had sent her a video showing mobs attacking ...
Rubina was visiting her home for the first time in nearly a week.
On February 25, a neighbour had sent her a video showing mobs attacking her home on the third floor of a building in Shiv Vihar, among the worst affected areas in the wave of communal violence that ravaged North East Delhi last week, killing 47 people and leaving more than 300 injured.
Before the mob arrived at her home, 33-year-old Rubina had already fled the area with her five children. Only five or six Muslim families lived in the immediate vicinity and she had felt unsafe.
Nearly a week later, amid suspicious glances, Rubina made her way down gali number 14 in Shiv Vihar. It did not look good. The ground floor shop owned by her Muslim landlord had been vandalised, so had his apartments and those of Muslim neighbours opposite. Grain, glass, clothes, the khus screens of water coolers, all the detritus of everyday life, lay scattered in the lane.
As she reached her rooms on the third floor, Rubina burst into tears. Clothes and mattresses lay tangled on the floor. An LCD television had been flung across it. A smaller television set, perched on a refrigerator, showed a cracked screen. A sewing machine...
