Shabbirpur (Saharanpur, Uttar Pradesh): Shabbirpur and Chhutmalpur are two small villages situated approximately 45 km apart in western Uttar Pradesh’s Saharanpur district. The villages made headlines after clashes between Dalits and Thakurs erupted last summer, resulting in the arrest of scores of people from both places. Three people including Chandrashekhar Azad, founder of the Bhim Army, were booked under the draconian National Security Act (NSA). Azad was arrested from Dalhousie, and Sonu and Shivkumar from Shabbirpur. On September 14, the three were released, but only Chhutmalpur has a reason to celebrate. Shabbirpur is still mulling the destiny of its people.

Sonu, a 30-year-old Dalit, was released from Deoband jail at 9 am last Friday. He has since been mostly sleeping and playing with his one-year-old daughter, who was born while Sonu was in the prison. At the time Sonu was sent to jail, his wife Rachna was three months pregnant. That she had to look after their three daughters at the same time is something that continues to upset Sonu. A mother of four daughters, Rachna can’t help but worry about her husband. She has advised Sonu to leave the village and look for work outside Saharanpur. His mother, Ramvati Devi, too believes Shabbirpur is not a safe place for her son.

“He has four daughters to take care of. We don’t own fields, have no savings. What little we had has been spent on lawyers and court proceedings in the last 17 months. He just can’t afford to lose anything more,” says Ramvati Devi, who starts weeping every time she looks at Sonu. Ramvati says destiny has never been kind to her. She lost her husband when her children were young. She raised three sons and daughters by herself. Just when life appeared to settle down, Ramvati had to deal with her son’s arrest and the serious charges of murder he faced.

The caste violence in Shabbirpur started on April 14, coinciding with B.R. Ambedkar’s 126th birth anniversary. Dalits in the village planned to install a statue of Ambedkar to mark the occasion. Opposing the move, upper caste Thakurs asked the Dalits to seek permission from the administration. The statue was kept at the village’s Ravidas temple after the police stopped its installation in the ‘interest of peace’.

Barely a month later, on May 5, the Thakurs of Sabbirpur village held a procession to mark the birth anniversary of the Rajput king Maharana Pratap with a DJ and pomp and show. On being questioned by Dalits whether they had police permission for the procession, the Thakurs allegedly went on rampage and burnt down the houses of Dalits. According to Rachna, over 55 houses belonging Dalits were gutted in the violence and scores of people were injured. Dalit women were also allegedly molested by the mob during the violence, as The Wire had reported.

According to Sonu, he was not even in the village when the Thakurs held their procession. He arrived at the spot later when Sunil, his friend and neighbour, reached the fields and told him about Thakurs setting his uncle’s house on fire. Sonu ran to rescue his family and that’s how he found himself trapped in the violence.

Aruna, Sonu’s cousin whose house was gutted in the violence, supported Sonu and alleged that the police trapped him and many other innocent Dalit boys from her village just to threaten them.

“They wanted us to keep quiet. So they arrested our sons. This was enough to tell us where we stand,” says Aruna, who had to drop out of her Bachelors in Education course because her father needed money to reconstruct their house.

Aruna claimed to have received over Rs 1 lakh as compensation from government for her loss, but nothing has been given to Sonu and his family, neither by the government nor by the NGOs which extended support. “Uski biwi bacche akele the. Kuch to usko bhi milna chahiye tha na (His wife and kids were alone. They should have also got some compensation),” she said.

Bhim Pathshala

Rohit, who runs a ‘Bhim Pathshala’ along with Aruna, vouched for Sonu’s innocence, saying he wasn’t in the village when Thakurs staged their procession. Rohit and many like him in Shabbirpur joined the Bhim Army after the arson, with the organisation extending enormous support to Dalits. The Bhim Army followers want to carry forward its mission of educating children. According to Rohit, over 200 children from his village and nearby areas study in the Bhim Pathshala, where three other women and two men teach all subjects till Class XII. All the teachers are in their mid 20s, and have completed college. Aruna, after completing her post-graduation, was pursuing a BEd but dropped out. Karishma, 23, is pursuing a BSc and Meedha, 25, has a BEd. One of the male teachers, Praveen, 24, has a polytechnic degree.

The Bhim Army had organised a large protest meet (mahapanchyat) in Saharanpur town on May 9. The police has alleged that members of the group went on a rampage and jammed highways after they were denied permission to hold the event.

Shabbirpur, where there was a fragile peace between different communities before the violence, is now split down the middle. Not only is the space divided into two – one occupied by the upper castes and the other by Dalits – people from the two communities refrain from crossing to the other’s area; they hardly speak to one another.

Sonu, who cannot afford a cell phone and lives with his family in a small house where everyone sleeps on the floor, however, feels that the violence was planted by outsiders – by people who did not belong to Shabbirpur.

“A group of Thakurs from the other side visited me in jail and extended support. I have heard that many of them have submitted affidavits to the police in which they clearly say that I wasn’t involved in the arson and in the murder of the man who probably died due to suffocation inside the burning house,” says Sonu. He fears that he can get arrested any time again because of the murder charges against him. Having studied only till Class 5, Sonu is trying to figure out what he can do for survival amidst all the uncertainty.

The situation is no different at the house of 70-year-old Shivkumar. Living barely a few metres away from Sonu’s house, Shivkumar is the third man booked under the NSA. He spent 16 months in Saharanpur jail. Shivkumar was the village headman before the police arrested him for murdering a Thakur in the violence on May 5, 2017. He is not sure if he still occupies that post. He says he has been framed in the violence only because he is a Dalit and was able to win an unreserved seat which has over 50% upper caste votes. He earned the hatred of the upper castes along with his victory, Shivkumar says.

“I cannot imagine a man like him committing a murder,” said Chaudhary Jan Nisar, a lawyer who is handling the cases of both Sonu and Shivkumar, free of cost.

Wearing a white kurta-pyjama, the elderly Shivkumar is shy. He agrees for a photograph to be taken when Jan Nisar asks him to sit next to him and smile.

Shivkumar, who won the panchayat elections with a margin of barely 500 votes, believes that his victory was a fluke. Deepak, his son, believes his father won the elections because there were too many candidates in the fray.

“There were 12 candidates along with my father. The village has approximately 2,500 voters, 450 of them are Dalit voters. Shivkumar won by just 500 votes. This was a mere coincidence,” says Deepak, who drives 25 km to Saharanpur court nearly every alternate day to fight for his father.

Reports in a local Hindi newspaper say that the police and district administration released Chandrashekhar Azad at night to ensure ‘peace’ in the city. But both Sonu and Shivkumar were released in the morning.

“This shows that my father and Sonu were never a threat to peace. They were arrested just because the police has to arrest someone to justify their job,” alleged Deepak.

“Apni nahi par baccho ki chinta hoti hai. Kaun bihayega meri betiyan? (I am not worried for myself, but for my children. Who will marry my daughters now?)” says an emotional Shivkumar. Uncertain about how long he will be out from jail, Shivkumar only wishes to get his daughters married as soon as he can. His other priority is to sort out the differences between Dalits and Thakurs and maintain peace in the village – a job he must perform as headman.

“These criminal cases and violence will only ruin the future for our children. We must sort this out,” he said.

The Thakurs of Shabbirpur have another story to tell. According to their version, it was the Dalits who incited violence and killed a man in the arson.

“They burnt their own houses to get compensation. Our sons were arrested for crimes they did not commit,” said Amar Pal Singh, a Thakur who lives on the other side of the village. He claimed his nephew, a minor, was also arrested by the police after the violence, and was able to come back home only after three months.

Jan Nisar, who strongly believes both Sonu and Shivkumar are innocent and highly vulnerable police targets, has a soft corner for Chandrashekhar Azad. Even though he also feels that Azad has gained huge publicity and fame, his clients have lost everything they had earned in the ongoing fight against injustice.

“I have known Azad for a long time. He was the classmates of my juniors (who are practicing with Jan Nisar at Saharanpur court). He had the traits and dreams of becoming a politician from an early age. He will rise. People are with him,” says Jan Nisar.

Ishita Mishra is a UP-based journalist.