A mob of rioters who burned down several houses in the Muslim-dominated areas of northeast Delhi did not spare the residence of Border Security Force personnel Mohammed Anees too.
While the jawan had hoped that his job profile mentioned on the nameplate hung outside their two-storey house would discourage the vandals, he was proved wrong. The nameplate on house number 76 in Khas Khajuri Gali clearly mentioned it was the property of a security force personnel who protects India’s borders from foreign invasions. Yet, it was burned down on the afternoon of February 25.
According to a News18 report, at first, the mob set the vehicles parked outside his house on fire, then they torched his home. Stones were also pelted at his house amid slogans of “idhar aa Pakistani, tujhe naagarikta dete hai”. A fact they lost sight of while committing the arson is that the person they declared a “Pakistani” is a BSF soldier who had spent three years guarding the borders along Jammu and Kashmir.
At the time of the attack, four people, including Anees, were inside the house. Luckily, they escaped on time and were given safe passage by paramilitary troops present in the area. However, all of their life’s savings are gone now as the inferno engulfed all the money they had kept aside for two family weddings that were to take place in the coming months.
Thirty-five of the 36 houses belonging to Muslim families in the two lanes of Khajuri Khas were set on fire by the raging mob on that fateful day.
Although Anees’s locality is a Hindu-majority area, the soldier claimed that none of his neighbours took part in the attacks. He alleged that the mob comprised “outsiders” and their Hindu neighbours, had, in fact, asked the rioters to spare the houses and even helped douse the flames.
