GURUGRAM: Mohammad Sajid and his family were visiting their village in Baghpat in UP when the riots broke out in Muzaffarnagar less than 100km away in 2013. But the harmony between neighbours built over generations proved far more resilient than those weeks of tension. There were no communal taunts, recalls Sajid’s wife Sameena, and not once did the family fear for its safety.Around 14 years ago, the search for jobs had brought them to Gurugram, among new neighbours. Like thousands of migrant families do every year, they blended into the city’s fabric and became absorbed in the pursuit of a livelihood. Socially, the family never encountered any incident that made it conscious of its religion, neither in Baghpat, nor in Gurugram. But last week, it became a national talking point as the horrifying video of the attack on them on March 21 by a mob of stick-wielding men played over and over on mobile screens across the country. Sameena was one of those in the terrified family whose screams were heard on the video clip. Sajid was among the men on whom the blows came raining down.Sajid, who has multiple fractures, is being treated at a Delhi hospital. Police have provided the family security. The bus that has brought the security detail is parked next to the house on a thin strip of land, brown and without a speck of grass, the same place where a cricket match was being played on Holi afternoon from where the attack allegedly originated. On the patio are plastic chairs that are occupied by cops and some neighbours. They sit in a random circle keep the tone low; except the crackle of a wireless set and a cellphone or two trilling.A number of cars line the road to the house. Bhoop Singh Nagar, a small unauthorised colony on Sohna Road, has suddenly turned into a spectacle.Inside the house, silence. The staircase still hasn’t been cleared of the glass shards that came from the smashed windowpanes. The ground floor looks like a hospital, on one bed is Sameer (19), Sajid and Sameena’s son , his neck in a collar and his left foot in a cast. On another is his cousin Abid (23), whose right hand is in a cast. Sameena says she can’t comprehend the communal colour the cricket match row took but is sure she no longer wants to live in Gurugram. The atmosphere, the family fears, is not right. They will return to Baghpat once Sajid and the others recover. “This is as much our country as anybody else. We have a national flag hoisted on our roof and had also taken out a candle march after the Pulwama attacks. We do not care about Pakistan. For us, Hindustan is our eternal home,” says Abid, referring to the ‘Go to Pakistan’ comment aimed at him and his cousins before the attack began.“They told us if we don’t leave on our own, they will either break our house with a bulldozer or burn it to ashes,” says Sameer. Sameena knows it will be tough finding jobs in Baghpat. “But it’s better than putting our kids’ lives at risk. We have our whole family there and we will have their support too,” she says. Sajid and Sameena have four sons and two daughters, Arifa (6) and Jia who is 18 months old. The trauma the two little girls went through horrifies her. When the 12 men barged in — six came on two bikes and six others on foot — the kids ran upstairs. Arifa and Jia locked themselves inside a closet. “The men who had come opened the cupboard and threw Jia on the bed. What was her fault in all this?” asks Sameena.Abid says he was visiting his uncle on Holi and his younger cousins insisted on playing cricket. So the children headed out for a game. “The first innings had just ended when two men came and said, ‘Oye mulla, tu yahan kya kar raha hai (what are you doing here?). An argument started. Then one of them slapped a boy and told us to go back to Pakistan,” says Abid. The cousins stopped the game and returned. The mob that vandalised their house had come from the direction of Nayagaon, a neighbouring village. All the accused identified in the case are residents of Nayagaon, from where a different account of how the row erupted comes. It wasn’t, says one villager, unprovoked, adding a 25-year-old man named Raj Kumar from the village had been beaten up first and received several stitches on his head. “Raj had gone to Bhoop Singh Nagar with someone where they fought and he was hit with an iron rod, following which he fainted,” says Anju Badhana, Raj Kumar’s sister. Police sources say a Nayagaon resident did receive injuries but claim they are not aware of his whereabouts.Several houses are, meanwhile, empty as the accused and their families have fled fearing arrest since their faces have been captured on video. Badan Singh, the village numberdar, says “This whole thing has been hyped and no one has asked us about the truth. It was a fight between children which was later given a communal colour by introducing Pakistan’s name in the whole controversy.”“All the accused can be seen clearly in the video and still the cops have not managed to arrest all of them. Why?” asks Sameena, who is yet to hear from the government, though several politicians have “reached out”. Abid says they are determined to pursue the case even after moving to Baghpat.

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