Woman undergoes DNA test to claim severed, charred leg of father killed in Delhi riots

Mohammad Anwar, who was allegedly shot and burnt during the riots, financially supported his only daughter, her visually impaired husband and two children.

File photo of smoke rising from buildings in Gokulpuri, one of the Northeast Delhi areas worst affected by communal riots in 2020 | Ananya Bhardwaj | ThePrint

New Delhi: When 27-year-old Gulshan enquired at a mortuary here about the body of her father who was killed in last week’s communal violence in northeast Delhi, she was shown a severed burnt leg.

Gulshan was told by some eyewitnesses that her father, Mohammad Anwar (60), was first shot and then burnt by unidentified people. Police found a leg from his charred rented accommodation in Shiv Vihar area.

“The doctors took my DNA sample on Saturday and will confirm if the body part is my father’s, following which they will hand over his remains to me,” she said.

Anwar, who sold goats for a living, financially supported his only daughter, her visually impaired husband and two children. He didn’t have any other children and his wife had died earlier.

“We were depended on our father for survival as my husband lost his eyesight after an accident four years ago and cannot work,” Gulshan said. She got married ten years ago and has two sons.

“On Tuesday (February 25) evening, my uncle called me and said that my father was killed during the violence. We rushed to Delhi from our home in Hapur district of Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday,” Gulshan said.

Anwar’s elder brother Mohammad Iqbal (76), who lives in the same area and sells balloons, said his neighbours took him in their house and saved his life when mobs were unleashing mayhem of the streets.

“When the violence broke out in Shiv Vihar, on February 25 my neighbours saved my life after giving me shelter in their house. Later in the evening, someone told me that my brother Anwar was killed by a mob,” Iqbal said.

Gulshan, along with her husband Mohammad Nasiruddin and two small children, has been travelling a distance of 95 km from her house in Pilkhuwa in UP to Delhi every day since last week to find her dead father’s remains.

“My uncle filed a case on Tuesday evening. Later, police went to my father’s house and found only his charred leg. He had some goats that were also burnt to death by the mob. Now, we are waiting to get his body to perform his last rites,” she said.