Two years have passed since violence rippled through the alleyways of several localities in Delhi but the horror and melancholy are still visible in the eyes of the families of the victims of the 2020 anti-Hindu Delhi riots. Many innocent people were slain as a result of the Muslim onslaught just because they did not share the same faith as their assailants.
Naresh Saini was one of the victims. Saini, a resident of street number 1 of the Brahmapuri area, was rushed to the GTB hospital in a critically injured state and fought his injuries for several torturous days in the hospital’s ICU unit before succumbing on March 4, 2020.
The deceased Naresh Saini, who was a vegetable seller by profession, had fallen prey to the wrath of a bloodthirsty mob of 400-500 people when he, on the wee hours of February 25, 2020, came out of his house to volunteer to help protect a local Hindu temple that had just been attacked by the mob. Naresh was so severely injured from the bullet that he remained in an unconscious state until his death.
Naresh Saini breathes his last after being shot by a mob wanting to desecrate a Hindu temple.
— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) March 7, 2020
Another Hindu, Alok Tiwari, was mortally wounded and abandoned to die.
Dilbar Negi (20) was set ablaze by rioters after his limbs were severed by a sword.
Read.https://t.co/IfzkYOIjG8
Two years on, the destitute family of Naresh Saini is struggling to make ends meet. The family’s financial situation has deteriorated since Naresh Saini’s death. Many political leaders who had attended Saini’s funeral after his heinous murder had gone on to make lofty promises, but it’s a pity that no one has returned to check on his family in the last two years.
Saini is survived by his wife, one daughter (8) and a son (7). The daughter’s education costs Rs 1700 per month. Though the school has given Saini’s son a concession in the school fee, the family is still concerned about the children’s future education.
The deceased Saini’s wife told OpIndia that there are several issues like her children’s education that give her sleepless nights. She added that since her husband used to put up his vegetable shop outside their son’s school, the school waived off his tuition fees after Saini’s death, but that’s not enough. Now, to run her household, Saini’s wife has started managing her husband’s vegetable shop.
His wife stated that her husband would never allow her to work at the vegetable shop earlier, but the situation has changed and she now has to handle the shop in order to feed her children. Following the tragic death of Naresh Saini, many leaders, including then-Delhi BJP President Manoj Tiwari, had gone to his house and offered help. The family had then received ten lakh rupees in aid, but no further assistance was provided after that, lamented Saini’s destitute wife.
Naresh’s elder brother, Rajiv Saini, told us that they did not visit the court in the last two years because officials kept reassuring them that his brother’s perpetrators will be brought to justice, but he doesn’t know how far the case has advanced. “We have no idea what is going on in the court or what has come to light through the investigation,” Rajiv Saini rued.
Rajiv stated that after his brother’s gruesome murder, the Jaffrabad police did file an FIR, but no one knows what came of it, said Rajiv Saini, crying sporadically as he remembered his departed brother.
Recalling the ghastly night when a mob of 400-500 frenzied people approached from ahead and shot a bullet at Naresh, Rajiv Saini stated, “A large mob had attacked our locality. Many people had come out to defend the area otherwise we would have been killed. During the violence, he received gunshot injuries.”
Rajiv said that his brother had just arrived home from his shop the night of the attack when he remembered he needed to get some medicines. When he went out to acquire the medicine, he was attacked by a mob of rabid Islamists.
He stated that Naresh Saini’s widow only receives a pension of 2000-2500 rupees every month. Apart from the pension and the meagre earnings from the vegetable shop, there are no other sources of income. Saying so, Rajiv was concerned about how his brothers’ family would make do with the paltry sum, which was likely only enough to buy the household’s monthly milk supplies.
Rajiv Saini further told us, “We built our house in 2016. Who’d have guessed something like this would happen? We raised funds and took a loan to do so. We assumed we’d have a place to live. The majority of the Rs 10 lakh he received as compensation went toward the repayment of his loan. The remaining money is in the bank. How long will the family be able to sustain from that amount? They have their entire lives before them. My deceased brother’s wife should be at least provided with a job,” the brother rued.
Naresh’s brother reiterated that the former was unarmed at the time when the riotous mob of rabid Islamists attacked him. He added that Naresh had gone out to defend the Hindu temple from being vandalised by the mobsters but they had no inkling that the mob would wreak havoc on the family. Even today people get emotional as they recall the horrific brutality inflicted on Naresh Saini and several other beleaguered Hindus, who found themselves surrounded by murderous Islamic mobs baying for their blood, attacking their places of worship, looting and vandalising their houses and shops on the dreadful nights of February 24th and 25th, 2020.
There are additional agonising accounts of innocent Hindus being slain by a violent crowd, in addition to Naresh’s heartbreaking story of sacrifice. Nitin, who was only 15 years old at the time, was savagely hacked to death in Gokulpuri. Another Hindu, Alok Tiwari, was gravely stabbed by the crowd and was left to die after leaving his residence for a leisurely stroll. Dilbar Singh Negi, a poor migrant worker from Uttarakhand, was brutally dismembered and burned alive. Many of the accused persons have been released on bail.
We at OpIndia have also extensively covered the Delhi anti-Hindu riots which the national and international media had falsely painted as an “Anti-Muslim pogrom”.
