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15-12-2024
NEW DELHI: Shahid Malik is fighting for a home that no longer exists.
For the past two years, Malik, an accountant by profession, has been working with a local lawyer to seek justice for the demolition of his house and more than two dozen others in Kharak Riwara Satbari, a neighborhood in southwest Delhi.
In October 2022, the Delhi Development Authority, a body responsible for urban planning, construction of housing and commercial projects, and land management in the Indian capital, tore down the houses without any prior survey or notice after losing litigation for control over the land to a private builder.
The cases Malik has filed one on behalf of the Resident Welfare Association and another for his own home still await a hearing. “The hearing is being continuously deferred to another date and we haven’t even had a chance to present our grievances. How long must we wait?” he asks but Malik has lost a lot more than just his home. Malik’s son Ziyan was born with cardiovascular complications two months before the house was demolished. His condition “got worse after we were pushed out in the cold”, Malik recounts, pointing towards the rubble of his demolished home.
As the infant cried continuously for hours, Malik rushed him to the doctor the same evening as his home was demolished. For the next six days, Ziyan was transferred from hospital to hospital and eventually put on a ventilator in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi.
On a cold October morning, the parents noticed Ziyan’s body turning blue as he struggled to breathe. Then, he was no more. For the family, his death was a direct consequence of their home being demolished.
“The doctors told us that exposure to dust made it even harder for him to breathe,” Malik says.
“My wife and I still shiver with pain whenever we think of Ziyan. We were never given a notice, the authorities stole both our home and our son from us.”
Like Malik, hundreds of Indian Muslims have seen their homes demolished in recent years without any notice, and in many cases without any legal documents to justify the razing of homes in which generations of families grew up, lived and dreamed of a future.
Often, city authorities cite urban development, beautification drives, or clearing “illegal encroachments”. However, in many cases, the demolitions are publicly pitched by governments as punitive measures against activists and their critics, in states ruled by the Hindu majoritarian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath has earned the epithet of Bulldozer Baba (Daddy Bulldozer), while the former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan gained popularity as Bulldozer Mama (Uncle Bulldozer). Their victims have often been disproportionately Muslim.
“The claims of ‘unauthorized constructions’ are inconsistent and specifically single out one community over and over again,” says Najmus Saqib, a lawyer working with the Association for Protection of Civil Rights, a civil rights advocacy group. “In such a scenario, it is hard for us to convince the community to trust the judicial institutions. There is a feeling of hopelessness everywhere.”
In June 2022, authorities in the Uttar Pradesh city of Prayagraj formerly known as Allahabad demolished the home of activist and community leader Javed Mohammed. He was charged under the National Security Act and was labelled the “mastermind” of violence that erupted in Prayagraj that month, following derogatory remarks by the then-BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma against Prophet Muhammad.
The irony? “The Prayagraj Development Authority, the organization that oversaw this demolition, has itself failed to produce a sanctioned map of the building that houses its office.” (Al Jazeera)
