Here is a brief report of a fact-finding team of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Rajasthan on the recent riots in Gopalgarh:
For quite a long time there had been a tussle over the land for graveyard in Gopalgarh town of Bharatpur district. The land was given for the expansion of the graveyard and it had also been legally registered under the Waqf Board. A few years back, the Gujjar community illegally occupied some parts of the land, and a case was registered in the court by the Imam of the Gopalgarh mosque and a few residents of the area. The population of Muslims is very thin in the area.
On September 13, after the scuffle between the Muslims and the Gujjars in the court, the Gujjars started threatening and bullying the Muslims of the area and even beat the Imam of the mosque. However when Muslims reached the police station to file an FIR, the station in-charge, Adhyatam Gautam straightaway refused to register the FIR and did not take any action despite the tense atmosphere.
On September 14, when Muslims gathered for a meeting with the tahsildar, and started to march towards the police station to file the FIR, Gujjars suddenly appeared and fired some shots in the air and started pelting stones, in which the tahsildar got injured. Gujjars threatened the Muslims and said, “We will see how you file the FIR.” In the afternoon the district administration tried to bring truce between the two disputants by calling twenty members each from both the communities for a meeting where Anita Gujar, MLA (BJP) and Zahid Khan, MLA (Congress) were also present. Meanwhile, around 40 youths belonging to RSS and Bajrang Dal came from Bharatpur and pressurised the Collector and S.P. to issue orders to open fire. At the same time vandalism started in the market and people started setting things on fire, and to bring the situation under control, the collector issued the orders to open fire and when the Gujjars marched towards the direction of mosque, where a large number of people were praying, the police and Gujjars opened fire on Muslims. According to the police sources, there were a total of 219 rounds fired by the police, and the walls of the mosque bear testimony to the brutality of police. After killing the Muslims in cold blood, the dead bodies were dragged and set on fire.
According to the reports, a total of 10 people are dead and almost 30 people are injured of which except 3-4 people, all are Muslims. The local residents claim that a large population of Muslims is missing from the area and the death toll in the incident is expected to rise. It is believed that if the administration would have taken some precautionary steps, such a large scale riot could have been avoided.
The numbers of the dead and wounded and the statements of eye-witnesses, make clear that the police was biased. Out of 20 police officers, 8 belonged to the Gujjar community and some locals even said that one of the constables opened the locker of the police station where arms were stocked and many of the local Gujjars picked up weapons from it.
If we go by the statements of Shanti Dhariwal, Home Minister, Rajasthan, then the whole of the administration and the police are free from guilt, however the witnesses and evidences portray a totally different story. Soon after the incident the two big political giants, the BJP and the Congress, have started to use and mould the issue in their respective interests. The BJP is trying to make the situation messier, whereas the Congress wants to do away with the issue and want to cover it up.