Delhi riots: How Muslims' homes were targeted and burnt

Mohammad Munazir arrived in Delhi decades ago, escaping poverty in his native state of Bihar where his landless father worked on other people's farms for a pittance.

In the beginning, like millions of poor migrants, he lived in a tarped hovel on the fringes of the sprawling Indian capital. He worked in a book binding shop and moved to Khajuri Khas, a gritty neighbourhood in north-east Delhi, which has a literacy rate lower than the national average.

When the book binding shop folded, Mr Munazir decided to start something on his own. He bought a cart and rice and chicken and began selling home-cooked biryani. His business thrived - "I was a hero, everybody here loved my food" - cooking 15kg of biryani and making up to 900 rupees ($12.26; £9.60) a day. Things were finally looking up.

Barely three years ago, Mr Munazir and his brother, a local driver, pooled 2.4m rupees from their savings and bought a house - an unremarkable two-storey building in a narrow lane. Each floor had two small, windowless rooms and a tiny kitchen and bathroom. It was cramped for two families but it was home. They even installed an air-conditioner to keep the families comfortable in Delhi's sultry summers.

"It was a nest I finally built for my wife and six children after a lifetime of struggle," says Mr Munazir. "It was the only thing I wanted in life, it was my only dream come true."

The dream ended in flames on a bright, sunny Tuesday morning last week.

Mr Munazir's house was looted and torched by a mob of masked and helmeted young men, who swept into the mixed neighbourhood. They were armed with staves, hockey sticks, stones and bottles filled with petrol, and were chanting "Jai Shri Ram", or "Victory to Lord Ram", a greeting which has been turned into a murder cry by Hindu lynch mobs in recent years.

Khajuri Khas was one of the ragged neighbourhoods engulfed by Delhi's deadliest religious riots in decades, sparked by clashes over a controversial citizenship law. There were no killings here. But three days of fire and fury in north-east Delhi would eventually consume more than 40 lives, leave hundreds wounded and many missing. Millions of dollars worth of property was destroyed. And there's mounting evidence that Muslims were targeted in a planned manner, with numerous well-documented examples showing some police aiding the rioters, or simply looking the other way.

There are some 200 homes and shops in riot-hit lanes of Khajuri Khas, a fifth of them owned by Muslims. However, it is virtually impossible to tell exactly which of the slim, serried structures that dot the untidy skyline are owned by Muslims, and which by their Hindu neighbours. The buildings even share common walls and continuous rooflines.

Yet last week, the mob targeted the Muslim houses and shops with chilling ease. Soot-laced, gutted Muslim homes with broken doors, melting electricity cables and mangled CCTV cameras stand next to unspoilt and neatly painted Hindu homes. Muslim-owned chicken, grocery, mobile phone and money transfer shops, a coaching centre, and a soda factory are scorched. Shops owned by Hindus are beginning to open their shutters.

The only thing the two communities now share are the forlorn streets overflowing with the remains of the violence: broken glass, burnt vehicles, torn schoolbooks, charred bread. A few goats bleating in the rubble of destruction offer signs of life.

"I have no idea whether the rioters were insiders or outsiders. We couldn't see their faces. But how could they identify our shuttered houses without any local help":[]}