As a Delhiite, the demolitions were an issue close to my heart. A new set of urban poor was getting created with each sealed shop and every razed business.
Spurred on by the courts, the civic body was relentlessly pushing thousands of traders and their families into the ever-swelling ranks of the dispossessed by snatching away their means of earning a livelihood. Overnight, people found themselves unable to pay the school fees of their children or put food on their table. Driven to desperation, many committed suicide while others tried to organize themselves to fend off MCD’s bulldozers, turning the streets of Delhi into a battleground. Mobs of protesters clashed with demolition crews; were lathicharged by the police; and finally, in an orgy of violence in Seelampur on September 20, 2006, four people were killed in police firing. The court-directed demolition drive in Delhi had drawn blood, pitting defenceless shop-keepers against a brutal police force. It was people against the state.
The judiciary was angry at the violation of Delhi’s Master Plan, which had resulted in illegal constructions and haphazard growth of the city. That the demolitions violated the human right to food and shelter was not an issue before the courts. There was ice at the heart of the blindfolded woman that human misery failed to melt.
Like many others, I had reconciled myself to the situation and treated the demolitions as bitter medicine. I had argued with those who were against the demolitions that the rule of law must get precedence over emotion. People had to pay for the wrongs they had committed and live with the consequences of their acts. The long arm of justice can’t forever be evaded, howsoever painful the dispensation of it may be.
That was till I saw the letterbox. So what was this rule of law I had been swearing by? In that early dawn, as Rajeev Tyagi’s flash bulbs exploded on the letterbox outside Justice Sabharwal’s house, I felt that most rules are mere sticks, used to keep the struggling humanity out of the way of the rich. Our idols, even the ones perched on the high pedestals of the Supreme Court and the High Court, had feet of clay and I wanted to tell this to the world through a medium which had a voice in the city. My own beloved MiD DAY was not published from Delhi and the story was certain to get buried in the Mumbai publication on an inside page. For once, and perhaps the only time in my life as a journalist, I was ready to surrender a newsbreak to others.
I called up a prominent television anchor/channel owner. A former students’ union leader, he had been in Delhi University with my brother-in-law, an ex-DUSU president. The two had worked together during the anti-Emergency days and I was confident that if anyone would follow up on our clue, it was he.
The trail-blazing journo heard me out patiently and promised he would do something.
I waited nearly a fortnight but nothing happened. I then called up another former students’ union president known for espousing the cause of traders. Like the anchor, the leader too disappeared from my radar following our conversation. Much later, when the Sabharwal issue would bring the civil society to a head-on collision with the Indian judiciary, I would receive his fire-breathing press statements on the issue, and treat them with the cynicism they deserved.
I was disappointed but never for a moment did I doubt the worth of the story that was nailed to a letterbox a few houses away from my street. With time, the realisation would come to me that Sabharwal’s name was quite like the floo powder in Harry Potter- it made people vanish with a whoosh!
To be continued
Next – A Woman’s Guile
References:
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/traders-strike-cripples-delhi/22004-3.html
Over 150 held for riots in Delhi:
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/article3079520.ece:
Time&Tide 