“Can you see the tiranga (tricolour) fluttering on top of that three-storey house? That’s their house,” said a motorcyclist, pointing towards a building painted in gold, with glass facade.
The house stands out amidst the single-storey structures of Bhoop Singh Nagar in the Bhondsi area off Gurgaon— the home of the Muslim family attacked by rightwing musclemen on Holi.
“We put up the Indian flag when we build this house around two years ago. It has been there since then. We are proud Indians,” asserts Mohammad Sajid, lying on a bed with his right hand in a cast and injuries on his left leg and back.
To his right sits Mohammad Abid, 23, leaning against the wall near the window. His left leg is in a cast and he wears a cervical collar after the brutal assault earlier this month.
Mr. Sajid, 44, recalls that he and his elder brother Mohammad Jamshed, 57, had come to Gurugram from Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh in search of livelihood around 15 years ago. While he set up a workshop to repair cooking gas stoves in Ghasola village, Mr. Jamshed started a furniture shop in neighbouring Badshahpur. Soon their three other brothers also migrated to Gurugram. “We never faced discrimination because of our religion. It happened to us for the first time,” says Mr. Jamshed of the Holi attack. But he refuses to speculate on whether the brutal attack on his family, which has left six of them severely injured, had anything to do with the growing atmosphere of religious intolerance in the country.
“We are businessmen. We know little about politics. We cannot say why it happened. But it all started after the two men on a motorcycle hurled religious slurs at us without a reason and told us to go to Pakistan. We were playing cricket away from the main road. It was all unprovoked,” claims Mohmmad Dilshad, the complainant in the case. His left arm was also fractured in the attack.
But more than the attack, it is the registration of FIR against the two members of his family that had left them shocked, said Mr. Dilshad. “We were beaten up. We are the victims in the case. But now we are made the accused,” he said.
“Though we have met the Commissioner of Police and he has assured security and justice, we are sceptical after the registration of the case against us,” says Mr. Jamshed, adding that they are too scared to venture out and return to work. “Our shops are closed since the attack took place. Despite round-the-clock police presence, we have seen people loitering around suspiciously adding to our fear,” he said. Though the family has, for the time, shelved plans to shift following assurances from the police, Mr. Sajid is not sure of the future.