It was the wee hours of September 23 when the entire city was sleeping peacefully, wrapped in the soothing darkness of the hours when bulldozers came rolling suddenly, razing down the portion of Median Masjid for road widening projects. The visuals of the demolition soon travelled social media, and the reports hit the headlines. “Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh demolition drive razes Madina Mosque” was a few of them. As the news travelled further, I picked my camera to capture the site. This photo story chronicles the details of it.
An eyewitness told me that around 12-15 bulldozers came to the site, razing down two buildings of the mosque.
“I was going to have tea when I saw 12 to 15 bulldozers arriving. After having my tea, I came back and saw that the mosque was being demolished,” he said.
The eyewitness also lost his home in the previous demolition, which took place around May and June in the road widening projects.
“We have lost everything. We want compensation. Our house was demolished, and we have been living in rented accommodation ever since,” he said.
I moved further, crossed the debris, and reached the edge of the road, where I saw police personnel still standing. The locals told me a heavy police force was present at the time of demolition. The number was large enough that they could not tell me the estimates of the number.
However, what soon caught my attention was that near the debris, life still continues with hawkers and passersby adding to the normalcy.
On the opposite side of the hawkers was a different life; people sat laminating the loss of their houses, narrating how poverty has crept with the loss.
“We are not in a state to speak right now. Our home is gone, and nothing is left,” a man who lost his house said.
“We have been left on the road,” he added.
“I am saying, if this is illegal, then demolish it. But what was the need to demolish it at night?” Social activist Mufti Mujeeb ur Rahmaan, who had spent a significant portion of his life near the masjid, said
“Has our judiciary become so weak that a mosque has to be demolished under the cover of darkness, with the lights switched off? he added.
“Two buildings have been demolished so far, and we have been told that the remaining one will be demolished by December,” he said.
Masjid demolition comes following a previous demolition action that had also been carried out along the same road for a road widening project. A similar demolition action was carried out in the area during May and June, where around 150 houses were demolished.
The development came after previous demolition action had also been carried out along the same road in connection with its widening.After receiving information about the demolition of the mosque, AIMIM Delhi Pradesh president Shoeb Jamai reached the spot.
