Police Registers FIR Against Family Attacked by Mob in Gurgaon

DATELINE: Almost a week after a Muslim family was attacked by a mob in Dhumaspur village in Bhondsi, the situation in the vicinity remains grim and members of the family continue to live in fear. The family who were planning to put their house on sale and move back to Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh, have now become entangled in fresh trouble.

Dilshad, who was injured and roughed up along with other members of the family on March 21, informed The Citizen that police have now booked a case against him under Section 307 of the IPC or attempt to murder. “We were told this morning that a case has been registered against members of our family under Section 307 of the IPC,” he said.

The family’s charges against the attackers has led to nearly a dozen arrests over the past week.

Explaining his vulnerability Dilshad said, “I fail to understand what kind of system this is. The entire world has seen in a video that we were roughed up, my hands were broken, members of the family are still languishing in hospital recovering from their injuries, and now the police has filed a case against us. This is bizarre injustice.”

He added, “It has become a trend on the part of the state machinery to file cases against families who were victimised so they give up on their determination to get justice. This happened in Afrazul’s case, Pehlu Khan’s case, and now we are in the same league.”

Another member of the family reiterated what Dilshad had said, but did not want to be named, fearing it would create further trouble for her.

“We have been living for more than a decade here, we spent so much money constructing this house, we have a successful furniture business running here in Badhshapur, but what happened on the day of Holi shook our faith apart,” she told The Citizen.

“A mob just barged in and beat up us like filth. They asked the members of the family to go to Pakistan even when there was an Indian flag flying on our rooftop. Now they have registered a case against the men in our family. We just want to leave this place and go to our Baghpat, or to any place that is safer for us, and for people from our community as well. There are just two Muslim families living here,” she said.

“After security being deployed outside our house and assurances from the police, we had managed so far. But now with a case being registered against us, we are clear that no one is with us not even the police.”

Himanshu Garg, South Gurugram’s district commissioner of police, confirmed to The Citizen that a case had been filed against the family.

“Rajesh, the main accused in the [family’s] case alleged that he was beaten up by the family using a bat and that there was an injury to his head. We had to send him for a medical examination. The medical examination confirmed that he was indeed injured, based on which we registered a complaint under IPC 307 against two members of the victim’s family, the original complainants in the case. We are duty bound to do that,” Garg told The Citizen.

It was on the day of Holi that a mob entered a two-storey building belonging to Mohammad Dilshad, in which Mohammad Sajid lived with his wife and six kids. Prior to that, according to the FIR, the main accused had approached the boys from Sajid’s family who were playing cricket, and demanded that they go and play in Pakistan.