Walked down Karawal Nagar Main Road with @furquansid and @AradhnaW yesterday. The road separates the neighbourhoods of Khazoori Khas on one side from Chand Bag, Moonga Nagar and Chandu Nagar on the other side. This is a working class, mixed population neighbourhood. 
Khazoori Khas is dominated by Hindus, has a minority Muslim population. Chand Bag is one of the neighbourhood where violence began on Monday. The protest site and a petrol pump opposite were burnt down. A mob attacked the protestors. Many protestors received bullet injuries.
Chand Bag, Moonga Nagar, and Chandu Nagar are more mixed population neighbourhoods.
Karawal Nagar Main Road is the main Commercial Street for these neighbourhoods. It is an 80-foot wife road and members of both Hindu and Muslim communities run businesses on both sides of the roads.
This is what we saw when we landed: A shop and some vehicles on our left was burnt down. Across the shop a Muslim shrine too was burnt down. Next to it was an untouched police picket.
As we walked in, we saw no other arson or damage till we reached a drain. There were Forensic Experts of the Delhi Police in and on the walls of the drain.
This is the drain where Intelligence Bureau Operative Ankit Sharma’s corpse was found. Two more bodies were recovered from the drain day before.
Across the drain, on Khazoori Khas side, AAP’s Hussain Tahir owns the tallest building. It is burnt down and this is what the road outside looks:
Around and beyond Tahir’s, some shops have been burnt down. Shutters of some others were pulled away and there are piles of things burnt down in front of such shops.
We walked up to a shop a little down the road away from Tahir’s on the Moonga Nagar side. It was a bakery. The owners—Muhammad Sajid and Muhammad Asif were standing at the shop. Their neighbour Ram Sakhi was there too.
We asked Ram Sakhi what happened. The said a waves of mob arrived Monday afternoon and vandalised the shop. ‘I pleaded with them to not torch the shop. You’ve destroyed everything already, I said. They threatened to throw me into the fire.’
Ram Sakhi is in her 80s. Says she hasn’t seen such violence in her time in the neighbourhood since she arrived 1989. ‘Our neighbors have left their homes. Situation here is bad.’
Nagina Bakery was started by Sajid’s and Asif’s father 40 years ago. It’s sits on the ground floor of a four storied building. There is a bakery workshop a floor above the shop. Sajid and Asif occupy with their families a floor each above.
Sajid and Asif moved with their families to Mustafabad on Monday after they sensed trouble. ‘We locked up and left Monday afternoon after violence began in Chand Bag,’ Asif said. They returned yesterday. ‘Our locks were broken, shutters torn down and everything was torched’
The fire consumed the bakery and the workshop on the ground and the first floor.
Asif took us upstairs to their homes. The walls along the stairs are covered in soot. Asif’s home on the second floor smelt of smoke. Its walls too were covered in soot. ‘They burnt down everything. These bags of dry buscuits are the only things we are left with,’ Asif told us.
Their homes were broken into too. The mob found its way to the roof where it collected pieces of bricks. Nagina Bakery is among the few four storied buildings on Karawal Nagar Main Road.
As we walked further down the road, we saw a row of untouched shops followed by one that had its shutters torn down. The torn shutters revealed a flight of stairs. The words ‘Welcome’, ‘Biology’, ‘NEET/AIIMS’, ‘Physics’, ‘Chemistry’, ‘Accounts’, etc. we’re pained in the stairs.
There was a pile of burnt furniture outside the shutters. The owner of the establishment 30-year-old Javed was standing outside. He told us he ran a coaching institute on the first and the second floors. He started the Mission Guide Institute for local children two months ago.
He runs three other institutes each in the neighbouring Karawal Nagar, Mustafabad and Bhajanpura. ‘Furniture and computers were pulled out of the institute and burnt in front,’ he said.
A few locals gathered around us. I asked them how violence has affected trust between the two communities. One of them said it will take a few months for things to normalise. ‘We haven’t slept in five days. Everyone here is on the edge,’ the person said.
‘Things are so bad, my students are talking down at me if I post anything on Facebook,’ Javed said. ‘I don’t think work will resume anytime, the atmosphere is very hostile. Things are helter-skelter here,’ Javed said.
We walked up to his institute, Javed said the building wasn’t burnt down because it is owned by Hindus. ‘Everything is targeted. They started by breaking the CCTV cameras.’ This is what the institute looked like from newsroom inside
‘I wrote on Facebook that the institute will remain shut for the next few days. Some of my students commented ‘why should we come to your institute anymore.’ Things are so bad here, I don’t think anyone is gong to send their kids to study here for at least a year,’ he said.
Across the street from Mission Guide Institute a shop named Suraj Band was vandalised. There was char outside the shop. Javed said the shop is owned by a Hindu and Suraj Band is run by a Muslim. ‘Everything inside the shop was pulled out and burnt on the street.’
As we walked down the road we saw similar targeted attacks. Some shops were burnt down, some others had the shutters pulled out and everything inside the shop was gutted on the road. Other shops were untouched.
We decided to cross over towards Suraj Band, which is on Khazoori Khas side, and walked down the Karawal Nagar Main Road. We came across a lane where everything looked burnt down. The entrance to the lane was blocked with tables, coolers and metal shelves.
As we walked in we realised some houses in the lane were untouched.
From one of the name boards out side a house, we figured we were in Gully Number Four of Khazoori Khas
We saw some dogs in the lane covered in soot. Some houses were burnt, some broken into. Some were locked and burnt down. Many people have moved out of Gully number four of Khazoori Khas.
Gully number four and five is a pocket of Muslims in the Hindu dominated Khazoori Khas. The only mosque on the Khazoori Khas side of Karawal Nagar Main Road is in gully number four. It’s one of the few four storied buildings in the neighbourhood. This was the mosque yesterday
Gully number four had 35 Muslim families and gully number five, 10. All the families moved to a relief camp in Chandu Nagar on Tuesday when violence broke in the lanes.
Gully number five also had businesses owned by Muslims. One of them was a fabrication until that made boards for sewing machines. It was smouldering when we walked in.
Gully number four opens into gully number 29, a strip of homes owned by Hindus. There were old men sitting on a folding bed in gully number 29. I asked them what happened. They were reluctant to talk. I asked them about fires in houses next to theirs. They said there was rioting,
looting and arson. ‘Houses of Muslims were identified by their name boards. Some 700 men in helmets stormed into the lane Tuesday morning. There was stoning from both sides. We tried saving what we could on this side of the lane. There were very few of us here,’ they said.
Residents of the only Muslim house in gully number 29 left the neighbourhood Wednesday, a day after the violence in the lane ahead. The old men didn't know where they went.
We walked out of gully number four and walked into gully number five. This is what we saw. The lane was desolate and parts of it burnt down
As we walked out we saw a burnt down motorcycle showroom—Aman Automobiles. On enquiring we learnt that it had a Muslim owner
We saw the same pattern of targeted violence as we walked back along Karawal Nagar Main Road.
We managed to trace the imam of the mosque in gully number four in Khazoori Khas to a mosque in Chandu Nagar.
The mosque in Chandu Nagar is tucked behind a Hindu dominated area. The mosque and its surroundings today is a relief camp with over 500 people who ran for safety from Khazoori Khas, across the Karawal Nagar Main Road. When we arrived they were being fed by local volunteers.
Here we met Muhammed Amjad Hussain. A 48-year-old contract employee of the Food Corporation of India. Even before we could introduce each other, he started recounting the horrors he faced Tuesday.
A resident of gully number four in Khazoori Khas, he said, ‘When violence broke out in our lanes, we thought it was going to be our last day alive. We were attacked with bricks, bullets were fired at us and petrol bombs were lobbed at our homes...
...The mob kept shouting Jai Shri Ram. It began in the morning Tuesday. We kept calling Delhi Police. They kept stalling us. We negotiated with the mob to get out of the lane. We were hit with sticks and forced to chant Jai Shri Ram...
...as we walked out of the lane. We left with the shirts on our backs and no money in our pockets. My house was torched down. I’m scared to even look at my house.’
Amjad built his house brick by brick in gully number four over the last twenty years. He was saving up for his eldest daughter’s wedding. ‘Over the last six months I had managed to buy blankets, bed sheets, a dinner set, a refrigerator, a bike, a television and some jewellery...
...for my daughter’s wedding’ He visited his house first time yesterday after the violence on Tuesday. ’Everything was burnt down. The walls of my house are still radiating heat. I’m a working class man. I earn INR15,000 a month...
Books, school uniforms and clothes of my three children were burnt down. Should I try feed and clothe my children today or go back and try to build everything from scratch. Where I supposed to go?’
