Delhi Police watched as Hindu mob brutally beat Muslim man, looted shop in Maujpur – By Prabhat Kumar

On one side of the road under the Jaffrabad metro station was a group of anti-CAA protesters, a sit-in comprised entirely of women, followed by a group of protesters, mostly Muslim, and then a blockade erected and manned by the Delhi Police. On the other side of the blockade, barely 200 metres down the road was Maujpur, where stood a group of people sporting saffron tilaks and brandishing rods and lathis. Jaffrabad is a Muslim-majority area in Delhi’s North East district, while Maujpur is Hindu dominated.

It was 24 February, around 5 pm and over the course of the next two hours I witnessed Delhi Police personnel stand by while the right-wing mob brutally beat a passer-by coming from Jaffrabad till he was bloody and on the ground. Members of the mob looted a Muslim establishment in full view of the police, which meanwhile was accepting tea and snacks from the group.

The area had been tense since the day before when the Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kapil Mishra had made a provocative speech at a junction on the same road. Clashes had broken out soon after Mishra left and the violence engulfed the entire northeast district for the next three days. As the targeted violence increased in ferocity, allegations and accounts of police complicity and inaction piled up.

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