Home a distant dream for riot victims

VADODARA/AHMEDABAD: Six months ago, Iqbal Sheikh''s family complained to the Vidyanagar police that some villagers had threatened them with dire consequences when they tried to return to their home at Mogri village in Anand.
"They pelted stones at our house at night and wanted us to withdraw complaints despite my explaining that we had not registered any complaint during the riots," says Sheikh, now settled in Hadgud village for the past three years.
Like the Sheikhs, hundreds of victims of riots in Gujarat have not been able to return to their homes. Reason: They fear for their lives.
They still live in make-shift accommodation, hoping that one day tempers will cool down and their neighbours will welcome them back. If at all, they dare to go to their haunted homes during the daytime, they make sure that they return to the safety of their new havens by sundown.
Sabirali Saiyed (30) and some 16 families, who lived in Ognaj village of Ahmedabad district, have not returned since March 1, 2002. He abandoned a job in a ceramic tiles factory and moved to the homes built by the Islamic Relief Committee (IRC) at Juhapura.
"Some of us just go to our village to buy kerosene, while others are afraid to do even that and have even changed their ration cards."
"Estimates show that 50,000 people were displaced by the riots and the government had not bothered to conduct a survey or rehabilitate them," says IRC''s Shakeel Ahmed. Yunus Mansuri, a survivor of the Dipda Darwaja massacre in Visnagar which claimed 11 lives, says none of the families has returned to the village. Even Gulbarg Society, where former MP Ahsan Jafri was killed with 38 others, is vacant.
Some of the residents have shifted to Gandhinagar. Many Naroda Patia residents are now in Vatva. Randhikpur was Ismail Isa''s home till February 27, 2002, when seven members of his family were killed in the riots and his daughter Bilkis Bano was raped. Today, he lives in Baria and refuses to return.
He, along with 74 other families, does visit Randhikpur in the day, but always leaves before sundown. "Until the Bilkis Bano case is resolved we will not feel safe there," he says.
There are many villagers in Panchmahals and Dahod districts where the riot victims do not dare to return. "There are some 300 people from Khedbrahma and Bhiloda talukas in Sabarkantha who are terrified to return and continue staying in Vadali," says Amanullah Pathan of the Aman Seva Trust.
Godhra Gaurav, an NGO collective, is planning to move the NHRC to know the status of internally displaced persons of these families.