Loot and Arson

In a short but brutal attack by a mob on the Muslim quarter of a Samras Panchayat village in Gujarat, hundreds of people become homeless and lose property worth several crores.

- Anupama Katakam

“WE heard the drums roll and start to beat. When this happens we know something bad is about to happen and we are in danger,” said Farhana Sheikh at Vadavali village in Gujarat’s Patan district. “The police told us to run to the maidan and take refuge over there. Suddenly, thousands of men wielding weapons, carrying burning torches and even guns, surrounded our part of the village.

Then they began looting and burning and destroying anything and everything they saw. Not a single house or shop was spared. We have lost not only our homes but material possessions worth several crores of rupees. We have nowhere to go,” she said.

On March 25, two students, a Hindu from the nearby Sunsar village and a Muslim from Vadavali, were involved in an altercation at an examination centre at Vadavali. Although the fight was defused by the local people, a group of men from Sunsar reignited it a few hours later and mercilessly beat the Muslim boy. The tension escalated further when some 7,000 men from the neighbouring villages attacked Vadavali’s Muslim quarters. One person was killed in the violence and several were injured. While women and children were spared, almost every house in the Muslim quarter was looted and gutted. The residents of Vadavali have blamed members of the Thakor and Darbar communities, which have a large presence in Sunsar, for the violence.

In recent years Gujarat has witnessed sporadic communal riots but the Vadavali attack, if one goes by news reports and available evidence, appears to have been a planned one, its manner of execution reviving memories of the 2002 post-Godhra riots. Rights activists and observers said it was possible that dangerous political elements had planned to use communal disharmony to influence the State Assembly elections scheduled for later this year. They feared that the State might witness more such arson and riots.