Haldwani: A mission to demolish an “illegally built” madrasa in the narrow lanes of Haldwani, followed by an unstoppable barrage of stones and bricks by a mob “instigated by the land mafia” that forced Uttarakhand police and civic body personnel to run for their lives compounded the nearly four-hour chaos that turned law and order on its head in the city Thursday.
The violence that left five people dead (all of them locals) and over a hundred including police and auxiliary forces personnel injured prompted the Nainital district magistrate to impose a curfew, while shoot-at-sight orders were issued by the Uttarakhand government. The state government has constituted a magistrate-level enquiry committee under the leadership of Kumaon Division Commissioner Deepak Rawat to investigate the violence and submit its report to the chief secretary in 15 days.
Police officers told ThePrint that 16 people have been booked in a total of three FIRs registered in connection with the incident, and some of them were being questioned. Among them is Abdul Malik, alleged owner of the now-demolished structure and kingpin of the land syndicate that allegedly incited the mob.
“Abdul Malik is one of the 16 accused identified and booked for their roles in the violence,” Nainital Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Prahlad Meena said at a press conference Saturday.
ThePrint spoke to eyewitnesses who saw the situation spiral out of control. All of them maintained that for a moment, they wondered whether they would return home alive.
Among these eyewitnesses were Haldwani Municipal Corporation (HMC) officials and Uttarakhand police personnel, who said that it all began at around 4 pm Thursday, when HMC teams reached Malik ka Bagicha in Haldwani’s Banbhoolpura area, accompanied by home guards, personnel from the Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) and Prantiya Rakshak Dal (PRD) to demolish an “illegal” structure.
Civic officials told ThePrint on condition of anonymity that the whole saga revolves around a structure which was “neither a full mosque nor a madrasa registered with the state government”.
The officials further claimed that accused Abdul Malik had even sold three acres of government land and that they had managed to recover an acre of that just a day before the first encroachment notice was issued.
Notice after notice
An HMC official told ThePrint that the first notice calling for encroachment removal was served on 30 January and a response was sought from accused Abdul Malik.
However, the official said that the party approached District Magistrate (DM) Vandana Singh to seek relief, which she denied citing documents.
Another notice was then sent on 4 February, the official said, adding that the corporation waited another three days as the party moved the Uttarakhand High Court on 6 February, but did not manage to get a stay order. The matter is now listed for 14 February.
At a press conference Friday, DM Singh said that the administration and local residents reached a consensus on no occupancy of the structure before bringing in earthmovers for demolition.
“A notice, issued on 30 January, required the encroachment to be removed within three days or for ownership documents to be provided. On 3 February, locals visited the nagar nigam to discuss with our team. They submitted an application and requested time to appeal to the High Court, agreeing to abide by the court’s decision,” DM Singh said at the press conference.
“That night, our forces conducted a flag march in preparation for demolition the next day but residents showed us a 2007 High Court order issued to the then DM of Nainital regarding the disposal of an application. We postponed the demolition to ensure the authenticity of that order and to comply with proper legal methods after which we sealed the madrasa with consensus that it was unoccupied,” she added.
Simmering protest that snowballed into violence
At least a dozen police, PRD and PAC personnel ThePrint spoke to confirmed that civic body teams arrived at the site with earthmovers, load-carrying vehicles and tractors at around 4 pm Thursday to demolish the structure.
These officials said they met with stiff protest as a number of local residents gathered, which was followed by a short burst of stone throwing at around 4.30 pm that quickly fizzled out as the number of administrative personnel and auxiliary forces outnumbered the angry residents.
A senior municipal officer who was present at the site told ThePrint, not wanting to be named, that demolition concluded at around 5.30 pm despite protests and mild stone-pelting which were restricted to a “safe distance” from the site of the demolition. But it was at around 5.30 pm, when the civic officials and police and auxiliary forces personnel were returning from the site, that “all hell broke loose” and stones and bricks came flying from all corners of the neighbourhood.
The violence that followed prompted even senior officials such as the sub-divisional magistrate and municipal commissioner to run for their lives and take shelter behind a wall, the municipal official added.
The situation quickly spiralled out of control and vehicles parked at the local police station were torched while the police station itself was allegedly ransacked by the mob.
Eyewitness accounts
A family in Gaffur Basti that lost two members in the violence alleged high-handedness by the police, maintaining that their kin were not part of the mob. The son of one of the deceased claimed that when he went searching for his father, he saw him being beaten up by police personnel. He also claimed that his father died as he couldn’t be taken to hospital on time.
The SSP refused to comment on this family’s allegation at the press conference, when asked by ThePrint.
Umesh Chandra Suyal, an Uttarakhand PRD jawan who suffered head injuries for he had to get stitches, told ThePrint that stones rained from the rooftops in the neighbourhood.
He further said that the mob was so out of control that when jawans and personnel were trying to escape in the vans stationed at the spot to get them out, there was massive stone pelting which led to many of them taking shelter beneath the seats of the vehicles.
A woman sub-inspector who was also injured in the violence recalled the horror, saying that the route to the demolition site was blocked by protesters, and later cleared by the police and other enforcement teams. “There were women in the madrasa. We got them out, which was followed by unprecedented stone pelting.”
She also said that the police retaliated to the stone pelting by flinging stones towards the mob but that did not stop them and her team had almost given up hope of getting out of there alive.
Some administration officials claimed that the mob opened fire at them and sources in the administration have confirmed to ThePrint that at least three of the five who died, lost their lives due to “gunshot wounds”.
Sources in the Nainital Police suggested that the post-mortem reports of the other two would explain the cause of their deaths because they were not found at the spot and were brought to the hospital from an unknown location.
Amid a curfew and shoot-at-sight orders, the state government sought help from the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBF) which sent a company and two platoons to control the mob.
An ITBP personnel told ThePrint that nearly 140 personnel of the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) were at the spot to control the riot but the situation had been brought under control by the time the ITBP arrived to secure the Banbhoolpura police station.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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