Standing at the rickety door of her rundown two-room house, Shahroz Bi, a frail woman in her fifties, betrays no emotion as she talks about the death of her son. “You might think how cruel this woman is. But to tell you the truth, I was relieved when the authorities told me that my son Aslam’s body has been buried one and a half kilometre away from the place where the police gunned him down. We have already suffered enough ignominy because of him and we didn’t want more troubles for the family.”
Shahroz Bi’s son, 31-year-old Mohammad Aslam, was killed by the police on April 4 in Telangana’s Nalagonda district. Also killed in the shooting was 27-year-old Mohammad Ejazuddin.
According to the police, both these men were operatives of the banned Student’s Islamic Movement of India or SIMI and were part of the group of seven that escaped from Khandwa prison in Madhya Pradesh in October 2013. While one of the escapees, a local criminal, was arrested the next day, and the leader of the group, Abu Faisal, was apprehended from Badwani in Madhya Pradesh in January 2014, the five others remained at large. According to the police, the five fugitives carried out a series of bank robberies and low intensity blasts across several states before they were traced in Telangana. Two have been killed. Three are still on the run.
Following the shooting, which the police described as an encounter, the media has been quick to label the dead “Islamic terrorists”. But conversations with a cross-section of people in Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh, where the men hailed from, reveal a complex narrative of alienated youth who started as ordinary criminals in a town that has been rendered a perennial communal tinderbox after the Babri Masjid riots.
Aslam and friends
The eldest of four siblings, Aslam dropped out of school to supplement his father Yakub’s meagre earnings as a bus driver. He showed promise as a good mason in his early youth but “bad company” led him astray, said his mother. Shahroz Bi did not take names, but alluded to Aslam’s associates, Amjad Khan, Zakir Hussain and Mehboob Guddu, who escaped from the prison with him. The Telangana police is still searching for them.
Like Aslam, the other three men came from poor families and had to leave their studies midway to augment the family income. All four grew up in the working class neighbourhood of Ganesh Talai in Khandwa, a town 130 kilometres from Indore. While the other three lived in the Muslim quarter of the neighbourhood, Aslam’s family was the only Muslim family in the locality’s Hindu section. They had no problem in the neighbourhood, said Shahroz Bi, till Aslam was arrested in June 2011 on the charge of murdering a police constable.
Constable Sitaram Yadav’s murder on November 29, 2009, was a turning point in the life of Aslam and his three friends, said Javed Chouhan, the lawyer who fought the fugitive SIMI members’ case in the Khandwa court.
Yadav joined the Anti-Terrorism Squad in 2008 and took a house on rent in Ganesh Talai in Khandwa, which had seen a spurt in communal clashes in the preceding years. Soon Yadav acquired a reputation for routinely picking up Muslim youths, who would be released later since no charges could be framed against them.
According to Chouhan, the slain constable’s strong anti-Muslim actions escalated tensions in the town. “When Yadav even framed Muslim women, the youth in the community boiled with rage. Since his murder in 2009, communal situation has only worsened. Yadav is hailed as a martyr by one community and a demon by another.”
Communal violence
Policemen in Khandwa admitted to the polarising impact of the constable’s actions but said the communal unrest in the town predates him. They noted that even trifling and routine incidents such as an innocent child mistakenly removing a stone from a place of worship or a bicycle clash involving a Hindu and a Muslim are enough to spark communal riots in Khandwa.
In July, objectionable posts on a fake Facebook profile of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Khandwa Municipal Corporation chairman Amar Yadav triggered communal tension here. One person was killed and at least four, including a policeman, were grievously injured.
On March 30, tensions gripped the town after a few people shouted communal slogans in Badabam area while returning from the funeral of a Muslim man who was found murdered near the railway station. The Ramnavami festivity on March 30 was also marred by communal tension as miscreants pelted stones on the procession.
Advocate Chouhan says hardly a procession, whether Hindu or Muslim, has passed peacefully in the town in recent years. “Khandwa is a tinderbox,” he said. “Miscreants on both sides are forever ready to foment troubles. I don’t blame fringe elements in the Hindu community alone for this.”
Competitive politics
Aam Adami Party Madhya Pradesh convenor and environment activist Alok Agrawal echoes Javed’s sentiment. Agrawal had unsuccessfully contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election from the Khandwa seat. He has been actively campaigning in the region on behalf of those affected by the Narmada dams for over two decades.
“Since Muslims constitute a sizeable chunk of the population, both the BJP and Congress find it politically expedient to polarise the votes on communal lines,” said Agrawal. “This vote bank politics has led to aggression in both communities, so much so that the spirit of tolerance has evaporated.”
Senior journalist and National Secular Forum convenor Lajja Shankar Hardenia says strife in Khandwa has turned increasingly dangerous after the nationwide communal conflagration in the aftermath of the Babri demolition in 1992. “Till then the town had no history of such a violent Hindu-Muslim faceoff.” The octogenarian secularist has been fighting for communal harmony in the state, particularly in Khandwa, for decades.
Hardenia squarely blames the BJP leadership for its inability to rein in aggressive Hindutva elements. He however adds that a relatively higher percentage of Muslim population has also escalated the minority community’s aggression. In the roughly 2 lakh population of Khandwa, Muslims account for 30%.
Khandwa superintendent of police Mahendra Sikarwar blames competitive display of strident religiosity for vitiating the town. “If Hindus and Muslims curb their propensity to outdo each other in organising religious processions, sanity can be restored to a great extent,” he said. “Processions in Khandwa have assumed an abusive character. I had to act tough on Ramnavami to ensure that rogue elements in both the communities didn’t hurl invectives and stones on each other. But the malaise is too deep to go away with police action alone.”
Economic strain
Poverty and lack of jobs in the district have also contributed to festering strife, Maheshwari adds. His boss and deputy inspector general of police Khargone range DK Arya supports Maheshwari’s views. “After Burhanpur Tehsil was carved out as a separate district two decades ago, Khandwa has become a fertile breeding ground for aggressive communalism,” he said.
Both the police officers point out that although the Muslim population in Burhanpur is much higher at almost 40%, the district is peaceful. Interdependence between Hindu handloom owners and their Muslim weavers ensures peace there. Burhanpur is famous in west and central India for its cottage industries in handloom and cash crops such as banana. Khandwa, on the other hand, has been witnessing an economic downturn with small industries closing down.
According to local journalist Sunil Karhalkar, Khandwa’s plight is also attributable to political parties’ aversion to encourage local leaders. “Our Lok Sabha member Nand Kumar Singh Chouhan hails from Shahganj on the MP-Maharashtra border,” he said. “He is also the state Bharatiya Janata Party president. Before Chouhan, Congress’s Arun Yadav represented Khandwa. He is from Khargone district. Neither Chouhan nor Yadav has a sense of belonging to Khandwa and that cost the town dear.”
Going astray
Political apathy coupled with drying job opportunities created the ground conditions for vulnerable Muslim youth such as Aslam, Mehmood, Amzad and Zakir to join SIMI. In their teens, they had taken small jobs such as tailor, bus driver and electrician. By their early twenties, the penury and growing sense of alienation forced them to give up jobs. Then, according to the police, Abu Faisal, an alleged hardcore extremist from Mumbai and mastermind of the SIMI module, lured them to the banned organisation in 2009. By then, the ban on SIMI had been in force for two years. Their arrest in June 2011 on the charge of killing a police constable cemented their reputation as sharpshooters.
After their escape from prison in 2013, the group was made prime suspects by the police in a series of bank robberies, including the Rs 46-lakh heist at SBI’s Choppadandi branch in Karimnagar in February 2014. More significantly, they were named as suspects in the low-intensity blasts at the Chennai railway station in May 2014, at Faraskhana and Vishrambagh police stations in Pune in June 2014, and at a house in Bijnore in Uttar Pradesh in September 2014. The Bijnore blast had led intelligence agencies to track the module in Telangana. Aslam and Ejazuddin gunned down two policemen before they were shot dead by the police.
While Aslam’s family declined to take back his body, Ejazuddin’s body was brought from Nalagonda to Bhopal and buried quietly in presence of his family and a few relatives. Ejazuddin hailed from Kareli town, 200 kilometres south of Bhopal, but since his arrest in June 2011, the family had moved to the state capital. “It had become increasingly hard to live in Kareli as people used to see us with suspicion,” said Ejazuddin’s father Azizuddin. “So we moved to Bhopal and I am somehow eking out a living as a small shopkeeper.”
Soon after the news of the encounter in Nalagonda was flashed, heavy security was deployed around Aslam’s house as a preventive measure. “There was a strong possibility of trouble if Aslam’s body were brought here,” said police inspector Harishankar Soni at the police post which is barely a few yards away from Aslam’s house in Ganesh Talai.
Aslam’s father Yakub momentarily peeked through the door of the house, looking dazed. He refused to talk. His wife, Shahroz Bi, agreed to talk after much persuasion. But she did not step outside the door, and withdrew within minutes, saying she wanted to be left alone to silently mourn the loss of her eldest son.
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Shahroz Bi’s son, 31-year-old Mohammad Aslam, was killed by the police on April 4 in Telangana’s Nalagonda district. Also killed in the shooting was 27-year-old Mohammad Ejazuddin.
According to the police, both these men were operatives of the banned Student’s Islamic Movement of India or SIMI and were part of the group of seven that escaped from Khandwa prison in Madhya Pradesh in October 2013. While one of the escapees, a local criminal, was arrested the next day, and the leader of the group, Abu Faisal, was apprehended from Badwani in Madhya Pradesh in January 2014, the five others remained at large. According to the police, the five fugitives carried out a series of bank robberies and low intensity blasts across several states before they were traced in Telangana. Two have been killed. Three are still on the run.
Following the shooting, which the police described as an encounter, the media has been quick to label the dead “Islamic terrorists”. But conversations with a cross-section of people in Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh, where the men hailed from, reveal a complex narrative of alienated youth who started as ordinary criminals in a town that has been rendered a perennial communal tinderbox after the Babri Masjid riots.
Aslam and friends
The eldest of four siblings, Aslam dropped out of school to supplement his father Yakub’s meagre earnings as a bus driver. He showed promise as a good mason in his early youth but “bad company” led him astray, said his mother. Shahroz Bi did not take names, but alluded to Aslam’s associates, Amjad Khan, Zakir Hussain and Mehboob Guddu, who escaped from the prison with him. The Telangana police is still searching for them.
Like Aslam, the other three men came from poor families and had to leave their studies midway to augment the family income. All four grew up in the working class neighbourhood of Ganesh Talai in Khandwa, a town 130 kilometres from Indore. While the other three lived in the Muslim quarter of the neighbourhood, Aslam’s family was the only Muslim family in the locality’s Hindu section. They had no problem in the neighbourhood, said Shahroz Bi, till Aslam was arrested in June 2011 on the charge of murdering a police constable.
Constable Sitaram Yadav’s murder on November 29, 2009, was a turning point in the life of Aslam and his three friends, said Javed Chouhan, the lawyer who fought the fugitive SIMI members’ case in the Khandwa court.
Yadav joined the Anti-Terrorism Squad in 2008 and took a house on rent in Ganesh Talai in Khandwa, which had seen a spurt in communal clashes in the preceding years. Soon Yadav acquired a reputation for routinely picking up Muslim youths, who would be released later since no charges could be framed against them.
According to Chouhan, the slain constable’s strong anti-Muslim actions escalated tensions in the town. “When Yadav even framed Muslim women, the youth in the community boiled with rage. Since his murder in 2009, communal situation has only worsened. Yadav is hailed as a martyr by one community and a demon by another.”
Communal violence
Policemen in Khandwa admitted to the polarising impact of the constable’s actions but said the communal unrest in the town predates him. They noted that even trifling and routine incidents such as an innocent child mistakenly removing a stone from a place of worship or a bicycle clash involving a Hindu and a Muslim are enough to spark communal riots in Khandwa.
In July, objectionable posts on a fake Facebook profile of ruling Bharatiya Janata Party leader and Khandwa Municipal Corporation chairman Amar Yadav triggered communal tension here. One person was killed and at least four, including a policeman, were grievously injured.
On March 30, tensions gripped the town after a few people shouted communal slogans in Badabam area while returning from the funeral of a Muslim man who was found murdered near the railway station. The Ramnavami festivity on March 30 was also marred by communal tension as miscreants pelted stones on the procession.
Advocate Chouhan says hardly a procession, whether Hindu or Muslim, has passed peacefully in the town in recent years. “Khandwa is a tinderbox,” he said. “Miscreants on both sides are forever ready to foment troubles. I don’t blame fringe elements in the Hindu community alone for this.”
Competitive politics
Aam Adami Party Madhya Pradesh convenor and environment activist Alok Agrawal echoes Javed’s sentiment. Agrawal had unsuccessfully contested the 2014 Lok Sabha election from the Khandwa seat. He has been actively campaigning in the region on behalf of those affected by the Narmada dams for over two decades.
“Since Muslims constitute a sizeable chunk of the population, both the BJP and Congress find it politically expedient to polarise the votes on communal lines,” said Agrawal. “This vote bank politics has led to aggression in both communities, so much so that the spirit of tolerance has evaporated.”
Senior journalist and National Secular Forum convenor Lajja Shankar Hardenia says strife in Khandwa has turned increasingly dangerous after the nationwide communal conflagration in the aftermath of the Babri demolition in 1992. “Till then the town had no history of such a violent Hindu-Muslim faceoff.” The octogenarian secularist has been fighting for communal harmony in the state, particularly in Khandwa, for decades.
Hardenia squarely blames the BJP leadership for its inability to rein in aggressive Hindutva elements. He however adds that a relatively higher percentage of Muslim population has also escalated the minority community’s aggression. In the roughly 2 lakh population of Khandwa, Muslims account for 30%.
Khandwa superintendent of police Mahendra Sikarwar blames competitive display of strident religiosity for vitiating the town. “If Hindus and Muslims curb their propensity to outdo each other in organising religious processions, sanity can be restored to a great extent,” he said. “Processions in Khandwa have assumed an abusive character. I had to act tough on Ramnavami to ensure that rogue elements in both the communities didn’t hurl invectives and stones on each other. But the malaise is too deep to go away with police action alone.”
Economic strain
Poverty and lack of jobs in the district have also contributed to festering strife, Maheshwari adds. His boss and deputy inspector general of police Khargone range DK Arya supports Maheshwari’s views. “After Burhanpur Tehsil was carved out as a separate district two decades ago, Khandwa has become a fertile breeding ground for aggressive communalism,” he said.
Both the police officers point out that although the Muslim population in Burhanpur is much higher at almost 40%, the district is peaceful. Interdependence between Hindu handloom owners and their Muslim weavers ensures peace there. Burhanpur is famous in west and central India for its cottage industries in handloom and cash crops such as banana. Khandwa, on the other hand, has been witnessing an economic downturn with small industries closing down.
According to local journalist Sunil Karhalkar, Khandwa’s plight is also attributable to political parties’ aversion to encourage local leaders. “Our Lok Sabha member Nand Kumar Singh Chouhan hails from Shahganj on the MP-Maharashtra border,” he said. “He is also the state Bharatiya Janata Party president. Before Chouhan, Congress’s Arun Yadav represented Khandwa. He is from Khargone district. Neither Chouhan nor Yadav has a sense of belonging to Khandwa and that cost the town dear.”
Going astray
Political apathy coupled with drying job opportunities created the ground conditions for vulnerable Muslim youth such as Aslam, Mehmood, Amzad and Zakir to join SIMI. In their teens, they had taken small jobs such as tailor, bus driver and electrician. By their early twenties, the penury and growing sense of alienation forced them to give up jobs. Then, according to the police, Abu Faisal, an alleged hardcore extremist from Mumbai and mastermind of the SIMI module, lured them to the banned organisation in 2009. By then, the ban on SIMI had been in force for two years. Their arrest in June 2011 on the charge of killing a police constable cemented their reputation as sharpshooters.
After their escape from prison in 2013, the group was made prime suspects by the police in a series of bank robberies, including the Rs 46-lakh heist at SBI’s Choppadandi branch in Karimnagar in February 2014. More significantly, they were named as suspects in the low-intensity blasts at the Chennai railway station in May 2014, at Faraskhana and Vishrambagh police stations in Pune in June 2014, and at a house in Bijnore in Uttar Pradesh in September 2014. The Bijnore blast had led intelligence agencies to track the module in Telangana. Aslam and Ejazuddin gunned down two policemen before they were shot dead by the police.
While Aslam’s family declined to take back his body, Ejazuddin’s body was brought from Nalagonda to Bhopal and buried quietly in presence of his family and a few relatives. Ejazuddin hailed from Kareli town, 200 kilometres south of Bhopal, but since his arrest in June 2011, the family had moved to the state capital. “It had become increasingly hard to live in Kareli as people used to see us with suspicion,” said Ejazuddin’s father Azizuddin. “So we moved to Bhopal and I am somehow eking out a living as a small shopkeeper.”
Soon after the news of the encounter in Nalagonda was flashed, heavy security was deployed around Aslam’s house as a preventive measure. “There was a strong possibility of trouble if Aslam’s body were brought here,” said police inspector Harishankar Soni at the police post which is barely a few yards away from Aslam’s house in Ganesh Talai.
Aslam’s father Yakub momentarily peeked through the door of the house, looking dazed. He refused to talk. His wife, Shahroz Bi, agreed to talk after much persuasion. But she did not step outside the door, and withdrew within minutes, saying she wanted to be left alone to silently mourn the loss of her eldest son.
