In Rae Bareli, how a routine crime acquired communal overtones

Indian Express Newspapers - DARSHAN DESAI: "A group of small-town tough guys tease a girl. A man from the girl’s locality objects to it. An altercation takes place, then a fistfight and finally gunshots, killing the man. A revenge killing follows.

This scene is common in Uttar Pradesh. But its entire complexion changes when you throw in the fact that the tough guys were Muslims. That the man who objected was a Hindu, a Dalit, and an Army jawan posted in Jammu & Kashmir’s Rajouri area. And that Dalmau village, where it happened, is a stone’s throw away from Rae Bareli, constituency of Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

A clinical look at the incident doesn’t give it a communal colour—nothing similar has happened before in Dalmau. Neither is there a political setting that may have planted the seeds of communal hatred here. In fact, it could well have passed off Friday last as any other incident, and it quite did. Yet, this incident has now filled the air with communal tension in a village of around 20,000 people. At first, it was only between Bachchi Ali—and his boys—and Ramesh Sonkar, the jawan. Now, it is They and Us, Hindus versus Muslims.

‘‘Most communal fires at many places across India have started from such incidents, especially eve-teasing,’’ says a senior IPS officer.

Indeed, there are now more policemen than people in the Miya Ka Tola pocket, where people disappear behind half-closed doors at the first sight of ‘‘outsiders’’.

And, in the smaller pocket of butchers within Miya Ka Tola, they have all fled in fear after Naeem Mohammed, one of them, was lynched in retaliation to Sonkar’s killing.

It is a little different on the side of the Khatiks—Sonkar’s community—where over two dozen people whisk you away to the home in mourning. Two wooden benches are laid out, on which sit Ramesh’s father and uncle Saryu Prasad, carrying a cell phone each.

A photocopy of the FIR filed by them is handed over as Saryu claims that Ramesh was attacked after the family objected to the Muslims killing their cows. He doesn’t accept the common version—endorsed by the police, too—that the altercation was a result of the eve-teasing incident.

‘‘I don’t know of any such thing,’’ he says, and some 40 people around agree in silence. Saryu says he came to know of the retaliatory killing of Naeem only on Sunday morning but doesn’t know who did it.

‘‘Ramesh was killed because his father and we have often caught the Muslims butchering our cows,’’ says Saryu, who claims to be a member of the local Nagar Panchayat and an SP ‘‘leader’’.

Says Sub Inspector R S Gautam, ‘‘Ramesh must have had an argument with Bachchi Ali and his cronies in the town when they were reportedly teasing a girl from Ramesh’s mohalla in the morning. Later in the afternoon, they bumped into each other again and exchanged blows.’’

He adds: ‘‘One of the boys fired at Ramesh and killed him on the spot. Then, a group of people from Ramesh’s locality attacked Naeem. I reached there with two other policemen but couldn’t do much. He was hit mercilessly on the head with lathis and an attempt was also made to set him on fire.’’ He says nobody has been arrested as the police are trying to douse communal passions first."