Al Hind Hospital has been inundated with victims of the riots which engulfed North East Delhi between February 23 and 27.

In these five hellish days, the hospital in the Muslim-dominated area also became a refuge for member of the minority community running away from mobs baying for blood, burning and looting shops and houses.

On March 2, we met Shabnam, a 30-year-old woman who had escaped her home in Bhagirathi Vihar, Gokulpuri, one of the Hindu-dominated areas, with her two young sons Arsh and Aayan.

The single mother relived her harrowing experience from the night of February 24, when she realised she had no option but to leave her home. “I want to tell you something, on the 24th night, around 11:30 pm, I was hiding on the 4th floor and watched as a group of about 50 boys assaulted two Muslim boys on the road outside. The mob of boys was from my own locality,” she says.

Shabnam enacts what one of the boys had to endure, “His hands were tied behind his back, he was made to kneel, while the mob standing in line asked him to say ‘Jai Shree Ram’. He did so. But still he was hit brutally on his head with rods. Even now when I think about it, I start getting a headache and feel dizzy, I have never seen such brutality in my life.” A distressed Shabnam starts crying, and says, “I don’t know what happened to him, if he was killed or not…I got so scared I went and hid with my children.”

Throughout the night, she says, she could hear chants of ‘Jai Shri Ram’. “And they kept saying things like ‘Desh sey nikalo salo ko, gaddaro ko’ (Throw out the traitors from the country) something like that. They kept calling us ‘katwe’ (meaning a man who is circumcised), and I could hear ‘bachao bachao’ (help) but I didn’t look or step out”, Shabnam tells us.

The family kept their lights off, and made it through the night. When morning came, she decided to make a break for it, but as she stepped out, a group of six to seven men saw her and her children. “We ran like dogs…I asked my children to run…but they caught hold of me and started beating me with sticks, and punching me with their fists.” Shabnam also says the men molested her. “They did whatever they could, hit me with what they had, and touched me in my private parts. They did everything…the only thing they didn’t do was rape me.”

She took her children and ran to Anand Vihar railway station where she stayed until Wednesday, when paramilitary forces were deployed. “For three days after running away, I was in shock, I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t understand where I was, what had happened. My elder son is so scared that he does not want to step out any more. They had hit him as well.”

On Wednesday, she attempted to go home to fetch a few things. “I escaped from the jaws of death,” she says, pointing to her neighbours who did not welcome her but instead called out to others saying, “The Muslim woman is back, beat her.”

She ran and, on the way, saw a PCR van which she flagged down. “I told them everything but they refused to come with me.”

“I will never go back alone. I don’t care if my things are all gone. I am a single mother, the future of my children is on me, if something happens to me, my children have no one,” Shabnam says, sharing with us that she works as a clerk in Karkardooma court, earning just Rs 6,000 a month.

While Shabnam agrees with reports pointing to outsiders making their way into Delhi, she wants to reiterate that in her case they were insiders: “I will say the same thing here, as I would in front of a judge and in front of God.”

The Delhi Commission for Women has launched an inquiry into sexual crimes committed against women during the violence. Swati Maliwal, the commission’s chief, has said the cases the DCW has heard about “through its 181 helpline and on-ground visits are completely horrific”.

There were several women we spoke with who said they had heard of sexual violence having taken place during the violence. One even pointed to their own neighbours having been assaulted, but also said that chances of people telling this to us directly was almost nil as they did not want to “tarnish their own name”.

There were, however, a few women who said they had been threatened with rape.

‘Hum Shri Ram ke bache paida karwainge tumse’

A single mother of three, Baby, had gone to take her eldest daughter from school when tension broke out near her home in Shiv Vihar on February 24. Leaving all her things behind, she ran from there with her children, with the mob chasing after her threatening, “Hum Shri Ram ke bache paida karwainge tumse pakar pakar ke.” We will catch you and make you give birth to Shri Ram’s progeny.

Baby, one of the many women who was taken in by good Samaritans in Chaman Park, had gone back to her house on February 25 to take some of her belongings. Soon a crowd gathered near her and said, “Give us your daughters and we will spare you.” Baby says she left all her belongings and somehow fled from there, “There are many others who have been molested but they are not admitting it out of shame,” says Baby.

But there are others who speak of the threats they received like 18-year-old Chandni. Like any other day, she was returning home from the export house where she works as a packer on February 24. But unlike other days, she witnessed the simmering tension at Yamuna Vihar. She rushed back home, only to find that her neighbourhood in Govind Vihar near Shiv Vihar had also been taken over by a mob.