Subrata Biswas: Muzaffarnagar Riots


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Calcutta-based photographer (and painter) Subrata Biswas returned from Muzaffarnagar and posted some images on Facebook. I was fortuitously online, and Subrata agreed to a feature about this sad series of events.

"On 27th August, 2013, two Jat brothers of a girl kill a Muslim man for stalking their sister and later the stalker's family kills both of them. This revenge killing sharpens the communal violence in Muzaffarnagar in Western Uttarpradesh. The two Jat brothers are beaten to death by a gang of agitated Muslims when they go to talk to the family of the stalker in Kawaal, an interior village in Muzaffarnagar. Following the high tension of these brutal murders, situation escalates into a major communal riot claiming about 45 lives and injuring many. Many Muslims have fled away. Kawaal which was populated by Muslims and Hindus in equal numbers was now a Hindu-majority village. In fact Kawaal is not the only village in Muzaffarnagar to have witnessed such communal violence and a resulting transformation in population. In all villages where the Hindus were predominant, the Muslims have left their homes. And the reverse has happened in Muslim majority villages." Subrata Biswas.

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