Sheikh remembers that they had just finished their dinner when the riot started around 9.30 pm. The three and a half hours that followed were the worst of the 31-year-old’s life. He saw the rioters set on fire the shops run by his relatives and then his house with his parents inside. Hiding in another burnt house opposite, he was too scared to try to save them.
“The three shops were first set on fire. When the residents started running for their lives, other houses in the colony were set on fire, one after the other, systematically. The rioters threw acid on people, and poured petrol and kerosene to set houses on fire.”
The next thing Sheikh remembers is seeing more than 70 people run towards the last house in the colony, cowering inside the only pucca structure — a one-room house built under the Indira Awas Yojana. The rioters targeted it next, pulling a thick electrical cable off a nearby lamp-post and throwing it inside.
Among those hiding there was Sheikh’s neighbour’s son Dilawar Sheikh, 12 at the time. Sheikh had managed to slip into a carton inside the kitchen, thus saving himself from getting electrocuted.
“My mother died near the entrance, with half her clothes pulled out. She was begging them for her life with her hands folded. The attackers told them to touch their feet. The people even touched their feet only to be burnt with acid, which the attackers poured over them. There was hatred in their eyes,” recalls Dilawar. He lost his father Abbas Miya, mother Ruksana and sister Saira Banu.
Says another victim, Shabbir Hussain Qadir, 32: “The people ran for life. Some started climbing the walls to reach kitchen lofts, hiding in grocery cartons to escape the electric current. Those who jumped out of windows were burnt with acid, those that remained were burnt alive.”
It was only after two hours that the police vehicles came. The victims were taken to the Mehsana Civil Hospital, from where they were sent to Illol village in neighbouring Sabarkantha district.
The minorities, who till then constituted 10 per cent of the population of Sardarpura — 25 Pathan families, 20 families of Sheikhs (Ghanchis) and about 20 families of Mansuri — haven’t gone back to their houses, which still stand in ruins, since.
They say they now live in fear of local panchayat leaders and other political leaders. Says Gulam Ali Sheikh: “When we went back to take some of our belongings a year after the riots, the panchayat sarpanch and others asked us to pay taxes before entering.”
He claims he sold two iron parapets of his house for Rs 400 and paid Rs 310 so that he could retrievesome old photos, bags, wooden materials and utensils from his burnt home.