Haryana: Jamiat seeks SC guidance on rebuilding razed homes; 3 held for mazar arson

The Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, a Muslim organization, has approached the Supreme Court, requesting guidance on rehabilitating individuals whose homes were demolished by authorities in Haryana’s Nuh district following communal violence that resulted in six fatalities.

The organisation of Muslim scholars, in a statement, said though the Punjab and Haryana High Court ordered a halt on Monday to the demolition drive in violence-hit Nuh, it did not order rehabilitation of those displaced and compensation to them.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court, acting on its own, has stopped the brutal bulldozer operation on Muslim properties in Nuh district of Haryana, but no order has been issued for the rehabilitation, compensation and transitional stay of the residents of about six and a half hundred mud-brick and pukka houses demolished illegally, and no order has been issued to take action against the erring officers, Fazlur Rahman Qasmi, Jamiat press secretary, said.

The statement said Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind has appealed to the top court for the rehabilitation of the victims of the “bulldozer operation”, compensation and accommodation in transit houses, and action against guilty officers.

It requested the court to issue directions to all the states to refrain from illegal demolition with bulldozers or strict action must be taken against them, it said.

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Bulldozer operation is illegal, no matter whether bulldozers run on property of people of any religion. The bulldozing of houses of the alleged accused or simply because stones were allegedly pelted from such a building is like punishment before conviction which is legally wrong, it said.

The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Monday ordered a halt to the demolition drive in Nuh and asked whether it was an “exercise of ethnic cleansing”.

Six people, including two home guards and a cleric, were killed in the violence.

3 arrested for arson

The Gurugram police on Tuesday (August 8) arrested three out of five accused for allegedly starting a fire in a mazar at Khandsa village, officials said.

According to police, the five men committed the act after getting influenced by social media posts on the communal clashes that began in the neighbouring Nuh district and spread to other parts of the city and nearby areas last week.

The three arrested men have been identified as Gulshan, Vijay and Lalit, all residents of Khandsa village, a police official said.

Also Read: Haryana violence: Demolition drive continues in Nuh; curfew relaxed

He said while Gulshan is a shopkeeper, Vijay is an auto driver and Lalit works as a delivery boy for a pharmacy.

All the five hatched a plan to create nuisance after coming across various social media posts on the Nuh violence. The accused, who were in an inebriated state, started the fire in the mazar with the help of some flammable material Sunday night. They then fled the spot. Our team identified them and three of them have been arrested. We are questioning the accused,” Varun Dahiya, ACP crime, said.

Cong delegation stopped from visiting Nuh

Also on Tuesday, a 10-member delegation of Haryana Congress was stopped from entering violence-hit villages of Nuh district, police said.

Citing curfew imposed in the area and security concerns for the delegation, a senior police officer said the delegation was stopped at Rojka Meo village and were stopped from entering villages affected by the communal clashes in the district. The delegation returned after that, police said.

Rajya Sabha MP Deepender Singh Hooda said they wanted to listen to the problems of affected people in Nuh city and send out a message of peace.

“If the huge force deployed today to stop us had been deployed that day also, there would have been no clash between the two communities. The government is entirely responsible for this whole episode. Obviously, the government was negligent and their intentions were not right,” Hooda said.

“The purpose of the delegation was to meet traders and other affected people of Nuh city, and give out a message of peace after listening to their issues. We also wanted to visit the Shiva temple at Nalhar,” he added.

The delegation was led by state Congress president Udai Bhan. Deepender Singh Hooda, Captain Ajay Singh Yadav, Mahendra Pratap, BB Batra, Bajrang Das Garg, Rao Dan Singh, Pankaj Dawar and Jitender Bhardwaj were also part of the delegation were also part of the delegation.

Hooda also said that both the home guards who died in the violence should be given “martyr status”. The family of the deceased should also be given financial assistance and a family member should also be given a job, he said.

(With agency inputs)