New Delhi: On August 28, Union minister Sanjeev Balyan visited Kawal village in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar district to participate in religious rituals marking the tenth death anniversary of the two Hindu Jat youth, whose murder, along with the killing of a Muslim youth named Shahnawaz, had triggered the deadly communal violence in the district and adjoining areas in September 2013.At least 60 persons were killed and over 60,000 others – mostly Muslims – were displaced following the violence, which took place majorly in UP’s Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts, not too far from the national capital.Just like last year, Balyan – whose political career was launched following the communal polarisation triggered by the 2013 riots – attended the rituals in Kawal this year, too. A Lok Sabha MP from Muzaffarnagar, he holds the minister of state for fisheries, animal husbandry and dairying portfolio in the Narendra Modi government.After attending the puja-havan ceremony held in Kawal in memory of the two Hindu youths – Gaurav and Sachin – Balyan, who was among those booked for inciting the communal violence in 2013, tweeted: “…prayed for the peace of both the departed souls.”A Jat by caste, the minister belongs to the Kutbi village, which along with its connected settlement Kutba, was among the worst-affected during the violence.Gaurav and Sachin’s deaths are often evoked by the BJP – including by UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath – in its political rallies.The Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 led to unprecedented communal polarisation in western UP, breaking old electoral and social bonds between Muslims and Jats.Also read: How Harmony Lost Out: Voices from Western UP Over the YearsThe BJP, from which several leaders and legislators were accused of instigating the riots, reaped the benefits of the communal divide in the state, especially in western UP. This is a phenomenon opposition parties have been unable to find a formidable counter to since 2014.A decade on, the fight for justice has moved at a snail’s pace.According to information gathered through the Right to Information Act, Shamli-based activist Akram Choudhary found out in October 2019 that the police had lodged 510 first information reports (FIRs) in the communal violence.In his reply, the additional SP of the Muzaffarnagar special investigation team who probed the cases informed Choudhary that final reports had been submitted in 165 cases, including 19 murder cases. There were 47 cases in which the offence of attempt to murder was lodged.However, 14 of these were dismissed during investigation, and the final report was submitted for want of evidence in 15 others.Chargesheets were filed in 18 FIRs. The police found 170 FIRs to be baseless.Credit: Superfast1111 / CC BY-SA 3.0In September 2021, eight years since the communal violence, the Press Trust of India reported from Muzaffarnagar that 1,117 persons accused in 97 cases related to murder, rape, robbery and arson had been acquitted over time due to the lack of evidence. The UP government led by the BJP had decided to withdraw 77 cases related to the riots but the court had granted it permission for withdrawal in just one FIR which involved former BJP MLAs Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana, former BJP MP Bhartendu Singh and Hindu extremist leader Sadhvi Prachi.Convictions in the Muzaffarnagar communal violence have been few and far between. In February 2019, a trial court convicted seven Muslims for the murder of Gaurav and Sachin. Additional district and sessions judge Himanshu Bhatnagar sentenced the seven – Muzammil, Furqan, Jahangir, Nadeem, Afzaal, Iqbal and Muzassim – to life imprisonment. What actually happened on August 27 and 28, leading up to the deadly violence a week later, is still disputed, with contradictory narratives from both sides.The convicted men were related to Shahnawaz.According to the FIR lodged at Jansath police station by Gaurav’s father, Gaurav, a class 12 student, had a verbal spat with Muzassim, a relative of Shahnawaz’s, a day prior to the double murder after the Jat boy’s cycle collided with Muzassim’s motorcycle. The next day, when Gaurav was passing through Kawal along with his cousin Sachin, they were attacked by Muzzasim and a group of other boys armed with sticks and a knife. Gaurav and Sachin died due to the assault. In their bail applications in the lower court, those accused of murdering Shahnawaz claimed that while he was among those assaulting Gaurav and Sachin, and he died of injuries suffered in self-defence.However, Mohammad Saleem, Shahnawaz’s father, accused the Jat boys of beating up his son first and killing him over the collision of motorbikes. After the verbal spat, Gaurav allegedly gathered seven others and armed with swords and knives dragged Shahnawaz out of his house and assaulted him and others. Shahnawaz later died in hospital. The popular theory is that Gaurav and Sachin were killed in retaliation for the murder of Shahnawaz.Whatever the sequence of events, what’s undeniable is that the deaths of the three young men turned Muzaffarnagar into a cauldron of communal tension.The single-member Vishnu Sahai commission that probed the Muzaffarnagar communal violence, while absolving the then Samajwadi Party government of direct responsibility for the riots, blamed the “acute communal divide” in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli created by the Kawal murders. “The riots resulted out of the polarisation between Hindus and Muslims as a consequence of the Kawal incident, when one Muslim youth Shahnawaz and two Hindu youth Sachin and Gaurav were killed,” said the Justice Sahai Commission report.The 775-page report, which was tabled in the UP assembly in 2016, mainly blamed the “negligence” of the local administration and “failure” of the intelligence agencies, along with exaggerated reporting in social and print media for the violence.Delving into the Kawal incident, Justice Sahai noted that the transfer of then district magistrate Surendra Singh and SSP Manzil Saini on the night of August 27 and the setting free of eight Muslim men by police, as they were not named in the FIR or suspected of the crime, angered the local Hindus, especially the Jats. They felt the Samajwadi Party government was working in favour of Muslims, the report noted. The situation got worse after the names of relatives of Gaurav and Sachin were added in the FIR lodged for the murder of Shahnawaz.Also read: The Continuing Tragedy of Muzaffarnagar Is Our Collective FailureWhile Justice Sahai mentioned that inflammatory speeches were made by members of both communities, he also noted that due to the failure of the intelligence agencies the administration was ill-equipped to deal with the panchayat of Nagla Mandaur called by Hindu groups on September 7, 2013, which led to large-scale violence. While the intelligence agencies had estimated a crowd of 15,000-20,000, around 40,000-50,000 people turned up at the panchayat, noted Sahai.In May this year, a sessions court in Muzaffarnagar convicted two Hindu men for gang raping a Muslim woman during the September 2013 communal violence. The woman, whose house was looted and burnt on September 8 that year, was raped by three men identified as Kuldeep, Sikander and Maheshveer, the court ruled. Kuldeep died during the trial. The court convicted the two men under 376-D (gangrape), 376(2)(g) (rape during communal violence) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code. Sikander and Maheshveer were handed rigorous imprisonment of 20 years with concurrent fines.While the victims continue their long legal battles, the impact of the violence on the political landscape of the region can be felt even today. The BJP won the Muzaffarnagar Lok Sabha seat in both 2014 and 2019. In the 2017 UP assembly election, the BJP won all six assembly seats in Muzaffarnagar and two out of three in Shamli. However, in the 2022 election, when the Samajwadi Party joined hands with the Rashtriya Lok Dal, the alliance won all three seats in Shamli and four out of six in Muzaffarnagar. Among those scalped were Suresh Rana and Mriganka Singh, the daughter of former BJP leader Hukum Singh, who had peddled the fake theory of a Hindu exodus from Kairana in 2016. Vikram Saini, one of the two BJP winners in Muzaffarnagar, was last year convicted in a 2013-related rioting case.
