NEW DELHI: Lying on a cot with a broken right hand and a shooting back pain, Mohammad Sajid wants to leave his home in Bhondsi village near Gurugram. A group of men, who are still unidentified, barged into his home and beat up members of his family on Thursday, allegedly without any provocation.
Stains of blood are still unwashed on the roof of the first floor of their home. Pointing towards the pieces of broken window scattered across the ground floor, Sajid says “We have decided that it is not safe to live here. For me, my children and family are a priority. They are at risk.”
The family members recounted the horror of the attack. The men and children of the family were playing cricket near the house around four in the evening when a group of men started taunting them. “What are doing here? Go to Pakistan,” said the group, according to Sajid.
“Sajid ignored the barb and continued to play. Then, one of the men slapped him. Sensing that the situation might get out of hand, they came back to the house and locked the main door,” said Shamina, Sajid’s wife. Her hands have blue injury marks and one finger has a fresh stitch due to a ruptured nail.
Their home is located in an unevenly laid out lane in the sub-city of Bhondsi, off Sohna Road.
There’s a large number of policemen around the house, which is also one of the tallest in the vicinity. Sajid lives here with his mother, wife and their six children — Samir(19), Sahvil(17), Muskan(15), Museer (13), Musaid (12) and Sumiya (10).
Sajid’s mother said since it was a holiday, her other son had also come to enjoy some quality time with the family.
“Little did we know that the day would leave a lifelong scar. They called us Mullah and were making it a point to break everything in the house,” added Shamina. The two cousins — Mohammad Dilshad and Darista —who shot the video, were also injured while trying to stop the rage-driven crowd.
“People think we have made a double-storied house and that we are happy and together so they want to take that away. We have not seen the people who attacked us before and we don’t know anything about them,” said Darista.
Sajid and his sons run a gas stove repair shop and occasionally sell carpets in a nearby village. The rest of the extended family, which arrived as soon as they heard of the assault, is from Baghpat in Uttar Pradesh.
The police, meanwhile, are still investigating the attack.
“We have arrested one person in connection with the case. Further investigation is on for nabbing other people who have been identified and belong to the area,” said Subhash Boken, PRO, Gurugram Police.