Shops in ruins after Jahangirpuri anti-encroachment drive

The gate and boundary walls of the area’s Jama Masjid were also destroyed

Riot hit Jahangirpuri was a scene of destruction, despair and helplessness on Wednesday after an “anti-encroachment” drive by the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) left the area’s shops in ruins, and its residents, mostly Muslims, without their source of livelihood.

Apart from the shops, the area’s revered Jama Masjid’s gate and boundary walls were also destroyed during the drive. 

As the bulldozers drove at around 10.15 a.m. towards the area’s C-Block, where most of the Muslim residents live, and began razing the makeshift kiosks and shops lining the road opposite Kushal Cinema, shopkeepers were left picking up whatever remained in the aftermath of the destruction. While some of the shops were partially damaged with the razing of their roofs and outer walls, most temporary structures were completely destroyed.

Shopkeepers, most of whom live in the area, said that they had not been served with any prior notice by the civic body and cried foul that no one had raised an issue in the several years that the shops had been operating “but only demolished them after the communal violence”.

Hussain, 40, standing beside his now destroyed second-hand cloth shop, told The Hindu: “I was inside my shop when I suddenly came to know that bulldozers were coming to destroy my shop…I wasn’t even given a notice so that I could have at least kept all my supplies separately. I have suffered a loss of about ₹15,000…how will I run my family now?”

Hailing from West Bengal’s Haldia, Mr. Hussain said that he had been running the shop for more than 20 years and used to earn about ₹500 on a good day. “I have two small children and a wife to look after…I pleaded before them to not raze my only source of income but they didn’t listen to my cries,” he lamented.