Virendra Kumar lives in gali number 5 of Moonga Nagar, which is right across the huge building where controversial Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) councillor Tahir Hussain has his office.

Moonga Nagar is located on Karawal Nagar road in northeast Delhi, which was hit by communal riots in the last week of February.

On the afternoon of 24 February, a “Muslim mob” forcibly occupied the terrace of his house and indiscriminately pelted stones at other houses in the lane, including on the adjoining Shiva temple.

Moonga Nagar is a Hindu-populated colony in the largely Muslim-dominated New Mustafabad.

Kumar’s house too suffered damage. The wash-basins and electric lights were broken; the floor and the walls developed cracks. Kumar however says he is lucky, for he escaped with a minor loss in the violence that day. His neighbours were not so lucky.

The furniture workshop on the other side of the temple was gutted. The house on the top floor of the workshop, where the security guard lived with his family, too was reduced to ashes.

After the riots, came the pandemic and the lockdown, delivering a second blow to the victims.

SInce the lockdown began, Kumar, who is about 40, has been serving cooked food to the poor in the area. He, along with his cousins and a few neighbours, has set up a temporary kitchen on the ground floor of his house, where they cook food for about a thousand people at a time, he says.

The beneficiaries include riot victims who have lost all means of livelihood.