Evil Stalks the Land: Fact Finding Report on Muzaffarnagar Riots
24 September 2013
A team of 24 activists, journalists, lawyers and students visited several relief camps and villages in Muzaffarnagar, Shamli and Ghaziabad districts of Uttar Pradesh on September 22 - 23 September, 2013. We met hundreds of victims, scores of relief camp committee members; spoke to people in general on the dhabas and in mohallas. We spoke to policemen on the roads, at various police stations.
All our efforts to meet the Muzaffarnagar DM failed. We called the DM atleast 5-6 times, sent him several sms messages, called his office but he was unavailable. Then Shabnam Hashmi called the Home Secretary, UP Mr RM Srivastava and asked him to help us meet the DM. Home Secretary was extremely rude. He said you go and do your fact finding. When it was mentioned that meeting the authorities and getting the official version was part of the fact finding, he said DM cannot make himself available according to your time. DM is busy in arranging relief and looking after Law and Order. The Home secretary was told that we have been calling him for a couple of days and sent several messages, he could at least respond or his office sends a reply. The home secretary said- I have no time to talk to you, I have other important work and call me in office hours only. The next in line was Chief Secretary, who never picked up the phone. [. . .]
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