Boy with Tricolour found dead in Bihar His head was smashed; his chest and stomach bore stab wounds

| Patna | Published 02.01.20, 09:05 PM

Sohail Ahmad bowed his head to hide his tears. “They would not honour even the national flag. My son was running with it, yet they killed him,” he said. His son Amir Hanjla, 18, was participating in a protest against the citizenship amendment in Phulwarisharif on Patna’s outskirts on December 21 when bricks began flying between the demonstrators and supporters of the new act. Amir, in jeans and red sweatshirt, Tricolour aloft in hand, appeared to have had run for his life. His dash took him through the lanes of Sangat Mohalla, home to a branch of the RSS-affiliated Saraswati Shishu Vidya Mandir and a known hub of the Hindu Right. That was the last anyone saw of him.


His body was fished out of the shallows on the waterlogged compound of the Phulwarisharif block headquarters 10 days later, on New Year’s Eve. His head was smashed; his chest and stomach bore stab wounds. “What sort of people will kill a boy holding the Tricolour?” Sohail said. “You can see pictures and videos of that day’s protest. He was proudly waving the national flag. Everybody knows he was killed by the RSS and Bajrang Dal people who live in that area.” Rajesh Kumar Pandey, Patna-based prant prachar pramukh of the RSS, said: “It’s their job to make allegations. If a crime has happened, it should be probed. The police must be doing their job right now.” Pandey added: “If they are alleging our involvement, they must name the people (killers). The RSS and the Bajrang Dal have never been involved in any violent activity.” Amir, fourth among seven siblings, had passed his Class X boards and worked at a bag-making unit. He had left for work on December 21 but found his unit closed in response to the state-wide strike called by the Opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal, Congress and allied parties. So he decided to join the protests.

A Janata Dal United-BJP government, led by Nitish Kumar, is in power in Bihar. “I had called him at a quarter to noon to check his whereabouts. He said he was at the protest but would return soon. I called again at 2pm. His mobile was switched off. I thought he must have gone back to the bag unit,” Amir’s elder brother Muhammad Sahil told The Telegraph. By 8pm, the family was nervous. Stories of rioting, stone-throwing and firing were floating around. So they went to Phulwarisharif police station. “The police asked us to check with AIIMS Patna and Patna Medical College and Hospital, where many of the injured had been admitted. We went to both hospitals as well as smaller hospitals and clinics. But my brother was not anywhere,” Sahil said. When the family returned to the police station late at night, the police refused to register an FIR on the pretext that their seniors were not present. It was only the next day that a case was registered. The police promised that teams would be sent out to search for Amir. For nine days, the teen’s family searched for him, carrying his photographs and visiting areas from where violence had been reported. “People would tell us he must have been killed at Sangat Mohalla. We told the police but they ignored us. Those were days of agony: we could not eat or sleep, we just thought about Amir,” Sahil said.