Team Clarion
NEW DELHI — Around 80 Muslim families were rendered homeless after authorities in Uttar Pradesh’s Sambhal district forced them to vacate their homes following an Allahabad High Court order.
The government’s action has made the residents struggle to find shelter. Some of them have been forced to live in the open.
According to reports, these Muslim homes in the Bahjoi area of Sambhal were built on the land of a glassworks factory. The police sealed the homes during a power outage in the area forcing the inhabitants to vacate them.
The officials, accompanied by a heavy posse of Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) personnel reportedly entered the homes and forcibly evicted the inhabitants, as they kept pleading not to be uprooted from their homes for over five decades.
Police flung their belongings on the open street. Locals headed towards their friends or relatives to find shelter.
“I have two little kids. Where should I go now?” a crying woman asked the media. “My children are young and they have displaced us,” another woman said.
A video of a local resident expressing his anger at the police action has gone viral. He said that these actions were taken against them because of their Muslim identity. “The disputed land was away from here. I was targeted because my name is Saddam Hussain,” he said.
He said that their forefathers did not make the right decision not to migrate to Pakistan at the time of partition. “Muslims were stopped by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad from migrating to Pakistan. Azad had said that the country also belongs to Muslims and they will be able to live here happily,” he said.
Almost all the affected families are from the working class, many in blue-collar jobs and mostly from middle-class or lower middle-class backgrounds who purchased these plots to build houses without knowing that the land belonged to the glass factory.
Reports say the uprooted families have been paying all taxes to the government and their ancestors were fooled in a land deal due to negligence of the administration. Some families sold their properties and moved away while some stayed on and are now being targeted. These families have been requesting government officials and courts to let them stay in their homes.
In 1994, Purushottam Dayal Varshay had gone to the court to remove the alleged encroachments. In August 2024, the court directed the district administration to the plot of land vacated. After this, District Magistrate Rajendra Pansiya scrutinised the case and asked the residents to vacate their houses by 16 October.