Express News Service Posted online: Tuesday, August 09, 2005 at 0949 hours IST
New Delhi, November 4: Reports and photos from The Indian Express that capture the November madness in India’s capital after the Indira assassination.
Over 50,000 Sikhs have been displaced since the communal riots broke out in Delhi on Wednesday (October 31).
For the 20,000-odd worst-affected people of East Delhi, where over 500 have died, help from the civil administration is non-existent. They lack food. They lack medicines. They lack sanitary facilities.
Token help has been offered by the authorities in North and West Delhi where around 16,500 people are reportedly ‘‘housed’’.
In addition to the abject terror of the last four days, and the hunger and inhuman conditions at the camps, the evacuees face the prospect of having nowhere to go.
‘‘Where can we go from here,’’ said Nanki, a woman at the Shahdara government school rescue camp. ‘‘Take me to Punjab,’’ she pleaded on Sunday. People continue to stream into these camps. Hundreds of families have been separated. No one knows whether the missing members of their families are dead or in hiding. And they don’t have any way of ascertaining this as the official machinery is not functioning.
There are no official lists of missing persons. But estimates made by evacuees at the Shahdara camp place the number at over 600. These include persons from Ram Nagar, Durgapuri, Nandnagri, Bhajanpura, Seelampur, Brahmpur, Yamunapuri, Balbir Nagar Extension, Rohtas Nagar Shivaji Park, Nathu Colony and Jhaupuri.
In Nandnagri alone, at least 50 young women are believed missing. When last seen they were taken into police custody, refugees claimed on Sunday.
The few surviving gurdwaras have been turned into emergency camps by the locals as also a few police stations. Everywhere the situation was the same. There was no aid from the authorities. Fortunately, food was forthcoming from local Hindus.
On Saturday evening, former Lt-Governor P G Gavai (He was replaced by M M K Wali on Nov 3), visiting East Delhi for the first time, drove past Saufoota Road but did not stop at the Durgapuri gurdwara which houses over 2,000 refugees, mostly children.
The few holed up in a smattering of Hindu homes have not been able to make their way to these camps. There is no force to escort them. The Army on Saturday said they did not have either the men or the vehicles for the job.
Numerous voluntary agencies fear that an epidemic is likely to break out within the next few days if the sanitary conditions are not immediately improved. Besides a desperate shortage of doctors and medicines, with a fair number of injured people, the refugees face cold nights in the open.
Desperate pleas to the police to requisition the adjoining Sham Lal College building for the Shahdara refugees have not been heeded. The camp, probably the largest in the city, with an estimated 8,000 people crowding into the two-storeyed school, is suffocating.
People were unable to find a place to sit. Cycle-stands, window-sills, corridors, the roof and all open spaces formed a carpet of humanity. Women and children lay on top of each other in passageways.
The injured said they had not received any medication from the local hospital. Manmeet Singh, of Jyoti Nagar, with third degree burns lay unattended in a corner. A langar was operating round the clock in the school playground behind, with rations supplied by a local Hindu trader.
One of the few buses available for evacuation was being used by the Army on Sunday afternoon to bring people to the overflowing Gandhi Nagar police station. Occupying every inch of the police station, refugees said they had not eaten for two days.
There was no water for them and no warm clothing. ‘‘What I am wearing is all I have left,’’ said Mohan Singh, who was asked by police to leave his house or face the consequences. He did, but knows nothing of the fate of his family. He had been told that his house has been razed.
The few surviving gurdwaras have been turned into emergency camps by the locals as also a few police stations. Everywhere the situation was the same. There was no aid from the authorities. Fortunately, food was forthcoming from local Hindus.
