NEW DELHI (AP) – Authorities used bulldozers to raze a number of Muslim-owned shops in New Delhi before India’s Supreme Court halted the demolitions yesterday, days after communal violence shook the capital and saw dozens arrested.
Shop owners searched through the rubble of their shops afterward to collect their belongings.
But for nearly an hour after the Supreme Court order, officials continued to demolish structures, including the outer entrance and stairs leading into a mosque.
They stopped the bulldozers just outside the entrance of a Hindu temple, about 50 metres from the mosque, and began to retreat, spurring outrage from Muslim residents who said they were being targetted.
Anti-Muslim sentiment and attacks have risen across India in the past 10 days, including stone throwing between Hindu and Muslim groups during religious processions and demolitions of a number of properties, many belonging to Muslims, in another state last week.
Police have arrested at least 24 suspects since communal violence broke out last Saturday during a Hindu religious procession in New Delhi’s northwest Jahangirpuri neighbourhood.
They said Hindu and Muslim groups threw stones at each other during a procession, leaving eight police officers and a civilian injured, local media reported.
Officials said their demolition drive targets illegal buildings and not any particular religious group. But critics argue this is the latest attempt to harass and marginalise Muslims, who are 14 per cent of India’s 1.4 billion population, and point to a pattern of rising religious polarisation under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.
Yesterday morning, bulldozers demolished a string of shops on the roadside in Jahangirpuri while the owners peered out from windows in their homes, watching helplessly as their stalls were destroyed or taken away on trucks.
