JUNE 12, 2007

Chawal: I was there that day… all day, I ran with them… When they brought Jafri saheb, I was standing there itself… they held him down, kicked him in the back… they meant to chop him up…

TEHELKA: Describe it all in detail… Where did it begin?

Chawal: I was at my shop when the VHP people came around 8.30-9 o’clock to get the shops to down shutters. Around 9-9.30, a shop was set ablaze right in front of mine. That’s when I realized it had started…

TEHELKA:Was it a Muslim’s shop?

Chawal: Yes, it was. People started running once it started. Papa told me to close my shop… even though it was my region, my area, and nobody would have said anything even if my shop had stayed open… Nobody spoke when they told them to close the shops… Then I gestured with my hands to say it wouldn’t look nice, it was a matter of religion and hence it was all the more important to close the shops… My father said close it for today, let’s go home… My father, the others, all of us went home…Then around 10.30 or 11, I went out… The moment I did so, I joined the mob… the ruckus continued all the time I was with the crowd… it went on for at least two and a half hours …

TEHELKA: Who was leading the mob?

Chawal: Most people had joined the mob. The moment that shop was set on fire, everyone started gathering there.

TEHELKA:Were the VHP people also part of the mob?

Chawal: All of them.

TEHELKA: Who were there from the VHP?

Chawal: At that time, I didn’t know all the leaders… I never had any contacts since I’m from a business background and I knew people only from that field… Later, though, when I met Atul-bhai, I remembered he was there too…

TEHELKA: Atul Vaid was there…

Chawal: Atul Vaid was there, then there’s one Bharatbhai Teli, he was also there. These boys…these big ones… they came to get me out of jail, it was then that I met them… they would come to the police station… Although they never came to the Central jail… they would look at me when they would come to the station … That was when I began realising that they were also there… And I used to wonder why I had been arrested while their names were dropped… Why didn’t Atul
Vaid and Bharat Teli’s names come up when mine did?… I didn’t give it too much importance, though, since these people could have helped me leave jail or do something else for me. That is why I never opened my mouth, never dropped a word anywhere about these people being there too… nobody ever said anything about it… not even the 40 boys who were inside jail…

TEHELKA: Everybody knew it…

Chawal: They knew it…We would never talk about what exactly happened… In jail, we would say that we didn’t know anything about it… that we’d just been trapped … I was recorded in the first chargesheet as having used kerosene to lit a fire… In that chargesheet I had been shot around 5.30-6.00 in the evening when Erda saheb said…

TEHELKA: Who shot you?

Chawal: Erda saheb said that…that whole region… Didn’t I show you the place?

TEHELKA: Yes.

Chawal: I was just standing around… some eight to 15 people were there near him… We asked, saheb, what are you doing, why are you saving them?

TEHELKA: You said this to Erda…

Chawal: The public… we were eight to 15 people… everyone asked him ‘What are you doing?’

TEHELKA: You asked him where he was taking the Muslims?

Chawal:We asked him where he was taking them… then he told us what he was doing…

TEHELKA: What did he say?

Chawal: He said, do this… when the vehicle [in which the Muslims were] comes this way, our constable [accompanying the vehicle] will run away… set the vehicle on fire… The whole episode will end here itself and there will be no question of framing a case against anyone… Poori picture yahin khatam ho jayegi [it will be “The End” here itself]… When he said this, the Bagri community thought that they were taking people who could turn witness… [they feared] that he might get them in trouble… They started pelting stones at Erda saheb… and when one of them hit him, I ran away. He took out his revolver… he was behind me… he yelled at me and told me stop… When I tried to pull my nephew along with me while I was escaping, he shot at me…

TEHELKA: Erda saheb shot you?… Was it by mistake…

Chawal: It was by mistake… it was shot at my hand… My hand was injured but none of the clinics were open, all of them were closed… All the hospital at that time… Then I went to the Civil Hospital… I wasn’t aware about things like these because I had never been part of anything like this before… That day, I ended up getting my real name written in the hospital records…

TEHELKA: Then how did you kill Jafri that morning?

Chawal: Jafri…Well, it’s like when those people caught him, I kicked him in the back and they pulled him away… The moment they pulled him away…

TEHELKA: You kicked Jafri?

Chawal: Kicked him…

TEHELKA: He fell down…

Chawal: Gira… woh nahi… khaich... unke haath me tha, na… Paanchchheh jan pakad liye the, phir usko jaise pakad ke khada rakha phir logon mein kisi ne talwar maari… haath kate… haath kaat ke phir pair kaate… phir na sab kaat dala… phir tukde kar ke phir lakda jo lagaye the, lakde uspe rakh ke phir jala daala… zinda jala daala… [Fell down… not that… He was pulled by his hand… Five or six people held him, then someone struck him with a sword… chopped off his hand, then his legs… chopped off all his organs… after cutting him to pieces, they put him on the wood they’d piled and set it on fire… burnt him alive…]

TEHELKA: So when you people were cutting up Jafri’s body, didn’t Erda come to save him?

Chawal: No one did anything… At that time, Erda saheb wasn’t even there… He had gone to Meghaninagar with his vehicle… He didn’t know they were chopping Jafri saheb… All this happened around 1 or 1.30.

TEHELKA: But did the rest of Jafri’s family manage to escape?

Chawal: No they didn’t… His wife was the only one saved… She disguised herself as a Hindu…

TEHELKA: But some of his daughters were saved?

Chawal: Nobody at the place escaped, none of his family… The only ones who did were the ones who weren’t there… His wife said that she was a maid… a Hindu, living in the Patrewali Chawl that is behind… Why do you want to kill me [she said], I’m just a servant. She was dressed like a Hindu… well dressed…

TEHELKA: She escaped because you didn’t recognise her?

Chawal: I had never met her because there was never a need to go and meet them… I never had any relations with them…

• • •

TEHELKA: How big is Gulbarg society…Do lots of people live there?

Chawal: Lots of them.

TEHELKA: So have people come back to live at this place?

Chawal: Nobody has come back… it’s closed now… it’s like a jail… Nobody came back to it…

TEHELKA: But some people were saved there that evening?…

Chawal: Some 40 people ran away… some of them had left before…

TEHELKA: So how did you enter Gulbarg?

Chawal: People got gas cylinders from their homes… They kept them on the society’s outer walls… then they got pipes from the bakery where bread and so on are made and they opened the cylinders with them. Then they went far and made a khupda [cloth torch] and threw the cylinders at the wall… The cylinders exploded and the wall broke. Then we got inside…

TEHELKA:Was the wall too high?

Chawal: Too much… it was no two ft wall… It must have been around 15-20 feet high…On top of it, there was a barbed wire fence too…

TEHELKA: So the wall broke with just one or two cylinders?

Chawal: Two cylinders… one was thrown there and the other one in the front… The wall would obviously have broken from the cylinders… Cylinders are heavy…

TEHELKA: So the houses inside caught fire?

Chawal: People used the residents’own things to burn their houses… nobody needed to get anything from outside… their own things were used to burn them…

TEHELKA: The same thing happened in Patiya too…

Chawal: The same happened in Patiya…