Courage Under Fire

Four heroic men and women, who turned saviours— and champions of humanity—during the communal riots in Delhi

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MUSHTARI KHATOON Chandu Nagar, Delhi

When the phone rang early on the morning of 25 February—Mushtari Khatoon, her husband Mohammed Hakim and their three teenaged children were asleep in their home in north-east Delhi’s Chandu Nagar. As Hakim handed her the phone and Mushtari grabbed it, a chill ran through her spine. “They are going to kill us, Chachi! For God’s sake, save us!” howled her young nephew Muhammad Niyaj at the other end.

The petite Mushtari, 42, rushed out in a blind panic to Khajuri Khas, across the dusty, broken road, from where her family had called. Trouble had been brewing, but no one had imagined the cauldron of communal hatred would boil over with such vengeance in Delhi, which was hosting US President Donald Trump at the time. This madness took away 53 lives, both Muslims and Hindus, and left hundreds homeless and orphaned, in the north-eastern fringes of the capital.

Reaching the lanes of Khajuri Khas, Mushtari watched in disbelief as hundreds of armed men shouting “Jai Shri Ram” flooded the narrow lanes, dressed in riot-police gear. “Carrying petrol bombs, country-made pistols, lathis and tear-gas shells, they went on the rampage,” Fayaz Alam, Mushtari’s nephew, says.

“I trembled within, but knew I had to jump in, else my family would be killed,” recalls Mushtari. She ferried them, making five trips across to her home in Chandu Nagar, a Muslim-majority area. On her last round, however, she got stuck along with a crowd, their lives hanging by a thin thread.