`Bloody battles don't bring back your children'

`Bloody battles don't bring back your children'
K S MANOJKUMAR

AURANGABAD, JANUARY 2: The heartbeats of Aurangabad, a town of over eight lakh people, stopped when it heard on December 11 that 26-year-old Ayub Khan had been killed. Memories of nightmares from the city's past came rushing back: burning houses and bodies, blood on the streets; men hunting men.

Then, Mehmood Khan spoke. After laying his son to rest at the Nawabpura graveyard, he said: ``If it be the wish of Allah that my son should die thus, then so be it. But let no one else meet with the same fate. Let us seek insaaf through the rule of law and not revenge.''

The three brief sentences restored peace in the town, one of the most communally sensitive places in the country, in a way no law and order machinery could have done.

Ayub was the victim of the brutal police lathi charge on a morcha on December 6, the anniversary of the demolition of the Babri masjid. There were at least 75 more, who had sustained severe injuries in the incident.

Except for a handful, all of them were Muslims. Muslims youthhad already declared the hospital premises as out-of-bounds for the police (it was only a week later that they could enter the hospital) and everything seemed ready to explode. So tense was the situation that the police delayed the announcement of Ayub's death for five days. As much as 30 per cent of the town's population are Muslims and the Shiv Sena has a strong presence here.

With elections to the Aurangabad Municipal Corporation just round the corner, political parties could not have asked for anything better than communal tension.

``Hundreds of people, from political leaders to agitated youth would come to me. Just a nod of my head would have been enough for them to get on to the streets,'' says Mehmood, a Class IV employee with the Aurangabad's People's Co-operative Bank.

``But I have seen enough of these bloody battles in my lifetime. They don't bring back your lost children,'' he says fighting the tears in his eyes.Mehmood Khan, realising that passions were running high, chose a shorter routefor the funeral procession. Instead of offering the final janate-namaz at the traditional Shahgunj Masjid, and then head towards the graveyard, he chose to offer it at the graveyard itself.

``Passing through the Shahgunj area was a sure way to invite trouble. It's just adjacent to the Hindu stronghold Ranabazar, and it would have been difficult to keep the mourners silent,'' Mehmood said.

His nephew, Jameer Quadir, who was coordinating with the police all through, got an assurance from the Commissioner of Police, S S Suradkar, that no police personnel would be seen anywhere near the funeral possession.

Mehmood also did away with the practice of holding a condolence meeting that follows a burial, at his house. ``I could not afford to mourn the death of my son before the people at that time,'' he says.

There are others, too, who recognise the difference that Mehmood made to Aurangabad's peace. ``The tension and anger in the crowd was palpable,'' says Mazar Moinuddin, a renowned academician and formerprincipal of the Maulana Azad College who was present at the burial. ``The mob seemed too restless to listen to anybody. Though we were trying our best to calm down things, I really feared for the worst to happen. In the end the passionate words that came from the heart of an illiterate man overpowered all other emotions that day,'' he says.

For the Special Inspector General of Police, S S Suradkar, who was given additional charge of the commissionerate of police that day (after Commissioner Shripad Kulkarni was sent on leave), nothing could have been more challenging. ``Without active help from those directly related I could have done little,'' he told The Indian Express. ``I found the father so helpful that at one stage he even offered to bury the body at Pune. But then as a policeman, for me, it would have been like running away from reality.''``But,'' says Suradkar, ``the way Mehmood took charge of the situation that day only goes to show how much a common man values peace in society.''