One September afternoon, over the patter of the relentless monsoon rain, Mohammad Gulfam spoke of the night of November 25, 2018. Around 1...
One September afternoon, over the patter of the relentless monsoon rain, Mohammad Gulfam spoke of the night of November 25, 2018.
Around 10 pm that night, he had set out on his motorbike, along with his 18-year-old nephew, Irshad, from their home. They lived in Nangla, a Muslim-majority village, a tangle of cobblestone roads and open drains, in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar district. Their agenda: water their fields some three kilometres away at the Muzaffarnagar-Meerut border.
“That is when we got electricity those days,” said Gulfam, trying to explain why they had gone to water their fields at night. “You can ask anyone in the area about the electricity timings those days.”
Somewhere close to their fields, Gulfam said, they were stopped by a police vehicle and asked why they were out so late. Not convinced by their explanation, the policemen bundled Irshad into their vehicle. “They told me they had to do some poonch-taach [questioning] and he would be let off soon,” claimed Gulfam.
The next morning, said Irshad’s father, Mohammad Dilshad, the family woke up to the news that the police and a gang of cow-smugglers had had a “muthbhed” (face-off) near Meerut’s Sardhana. One person had died: Irshad.
According to the police, Irshad died on...
