By Saiyed Danish, TwoCircles.net,
Muzaffarnagar: If the pain and traumatic experience of Muzaffarnagar riot-victims is not enough to beat the daylight out of their confidence in the idea of justice, the news published in a local newspaper almost a week ago brazenly attempted to vilify the riots’ victims, stooping to the lowest levels of reportage.
On January 8, 2014 the Meerut edition of Dainik Jagran came out with a story through which it wrongly tried to establish that two riot-hit men brothers Rojuddin and Salim, sons of Hakimuddin were missing from the Jogia Kheda and Loi camps respectively which swelled Delhi police’s suspicion about the possibility of their involvement in the Pakistan based terrorist organization Lashkar e Taiba’s attempt to radicalise the riot victims.
Rojuddin
According to Delhi police claims, the two terror suspects arrested earlier from Meerut had confessed that they were sent to radicalise angered youths in the camp and told that it was still happening there.
“Delhi police quickly reached Muzaffarnagar camps at Loi and enquired about the two men, Rojuddin and Salim there. They learnt that both stayed at Loi camp during the riots but moved to Jogia Kheda after some days. But where did they go from Jogia Kheda is not known,” reads a paragraph on the news of the two absconding men, in the Hindi daily.
The story was later reported in Hindi daily Hindustan as well. However, when TCN reached the village to assess the situation on the ground, the truth turned out to completely different from what was made to appear.
Both Salim and Rojuddin are very much at their respective camps. Salim is still very living with his wife and children at Loi. (The original camp was forcibly removed by the government, but those who had no other alternative have set up several small camps nearby. One such camp is near a pond in Loi.) Rojuddin, on the other hand lives in Jogia Kheda with his family.
“I and my brothers are already riot-victims. We are hit by every adverse situations life can offer us. I don’t even know how to read. It was only when somebody at Jogia Kheda told me that news published in a paper has rendered me missing, that I came to know of this,” Rojuddin told TCN, adding that they have “nothing to do with instigating anyone.”
Sharing his travails, he added, “On September 7, we kept receiving phones after phones after the Kawal incident happened. On September 8, the village chief Harpal came to us and begged us not to go to other villages as it would bring bad name to him and the village. We believed him and stayed back. But he and Tham Singh had already planned to kill us all and when the attack happened, we ran for our lives watching them looting and burning our homes.”
Salim (55) looks equally astonished. “I am living at Loi with my wife and children. I had no knowledge of such news. All I know is that I never went missing. We left our homes in utter sadness as the events of the riots unfolded. They looted whatever valuable items were there including some jewelry we had bought with so much difficulties. I still work as labourer nearby and leave the camp early in order to work more. We are psychologically hit and have become insomniacs,” he said.
Rojuddin’s elder son goes to work daily. His two sons have been enrolled in a local school of Jogia Kheda where he hopes to earn enough so that he could continue their education. Almost three weeks ago, Rojuddin’s eldest son Imtiaj’s wife gave birth to a child in a camp in the madrasa without proper medical facilities as U.P. government has not yet provided any help whatsoever to the riot victims languishing in Jogia Kheda madrasa and various camps of Muzaffarnagar.