KALYAN, 15 April — Her voice choking with sobs, Mumtaz Feroz Khan displayed large bruises on her legs and described her horror when once friendly Hindu neighbors turned against her as the communal violence spread toward Bombay.
“I would have been beaten to death, if I was not saved in time,” Mumtaz said, tearfully recounting the attack as the country’s worst Hindu-Muslim violence in a decade spread last week to the outskirts of Bombay. More than 900 people, most of them Muslims, have died in the neighboring Gujarat state since the end of February, when a Muslim mob torched a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, killing 58 people.
Police have stepped up security in Bombay, which witnessed the communal violence nine years ago that killed hundreds.
“My neighbor Savitra and five other Hindu women caught me by my hair, shouted obscene words and beat me with iron rods,” Mumtaz said. “I fell at Savitra’s husband’s feet and begged for mercy. “He saved my life,” she said. Along with her husband and four children, she fled their home in Rohidaswada, a Hindu and Muslim neighborhood in Kalyan, when mobs from both communities burned and looted houses late on Tuesday night.
More than 700 Muslims from Rohidaswada have taken shelter in the Bazme Sadaqat Madrassa, left with nothing except the clothes they are wearing. Hindus whose houses were torched by Muslim mobs also have lost everything and have nowhere to go. Many of them are sleeping out in an open ground in Rohidaswada.
Large parts of Kalyan are still under curfew with police and armed paramilitary troops keeping vigil. The violence has cast a shadow over the future of the Hindu extremist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led coalition government at the center. Key coalition members and the opposition are demanding Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee sack the chief minister of Gujarat and are angry that he has instead called elections.
The refugees at the madrassa say they get threats when they try to return to their homes.
“They (Hindus) tell us they will turn Kalyan into Gujarat. They throw stones and bottles at us,” said Saeeda Sheikh, another refugee. “We had good relations with our Hindu neighbors. I just cannot understand why they suddenly did this,” said Khan adding her house has been completely ransacked.
“The savings we had collected rupee by rupee and household items we gathered over the last 20 years have all gone in a single night.”
Muslims in the camp said police had picked up scores of young men from their homes. “Three of my sons were beaten mercilessly by the police and taken away from home,” said Hussainabi Sheikh.
