‘We’d never heard of YouTuber Saleem Wastik. How could anyone be so angry as to attack him?’ At brothers’ Amroha home, there is shock and disbelief

Twenty-two-year-old Zeeshan and his older brother Gulfam (35) were shot dead by police in two separate night-time encounters that took place in Ghaziabad on March 1 and March 3. The previous Friday, on February 27, the brothers had allegedly attacked a YouTuber named Saleem Wastik in his home with a razor, stabbing him in the abdomen and slashing his neck.

Wastik, who is being treated for his deep wounds in a private hospital in Delhi, has been described by police as an “ex-Muslim” who held and expressed controversial views on Islam. Gulfam and Zeeshan, who according to police were “fanatics”, had purportedly taken offence at Wastik’s views.

The elderly father of the two men does not deny the alleged crime of his sons. But he wishes that instead of killing them, the police had put them through the due process of law in accordance with their rights under the Constitution.

“The police killed them both. All I had wanted was to save my other son,” Buniyad Ali said, his eyes welling up with tears as he sat in a plastic chair in the home of a neighbour.

Gulfam was killed on Tuesday in the Indirapuram area of Ghaziabad, two days after Zeeshan was shot dead in Loni, also in Ghaziabad.

Each of the brothers carried a bounty of Rs 1 lakh on his head. Both were shot at by police in self-defence after they allegedly opened fire at police parties. Both men were declared dead in hospital, police had said later.

“They (police) took away their (Zeeshan’s and Gulfam’s) rights as citizens of the country. Had I known that they (sons) were involved, I would have given them up to the police myself,” the father said.

Members of Buniyad Ali’s family said Gulfam, the older of the brothers, had moved out of Amroha in 2013, and begun to work as a carpenter in Ghaziabad, Noida, and Delhi.

“He started to live in Khoda (Ghaziabad), and soon took his family there. After some time, Zeeshan joined his older brother,” Buniyad Ali said.

According to the father, the brothers worked for a while as carpenters in a private company. “But after Covid, Gulfam opened his own shop in Noida’s Sector 120,” Buniyad Ali said.

In the third week of February, Gulfam moved his wife and children to Amroha to stay with his parents during Ramzan, the Muslim holy month of fasting. The brothers continued to work in the NCR, but they would travel to Amroha every Friday and leave the next morning.

“I never suspected that they could attack someone. They were so soft-spoken. I never heard either of them raise their voice at his wife or children,” Buniyad Ali said. “Gulfam has a four-year-old son and a two-year-old daughter. We do not know who will take care of them now,” he said.

Buniyad Ali recalled that both brothers had come home last Friday, the day Saleem Wastik was attacked. “They had come together. Zeeshan left the next day, while Gulfam stayed back,” he said.

According to the father, the mother of the two men had called Zeeshan around 7 pm on Sunday evening, but received no answer. “When he did not answer despite multiple calls, I too began to call him,” Buniyad said. At some point, someone did take the call, Buniyad said, but said nothing. “I could never speak to my son. We only saw his body during the post mortem examination,” he said.

That same night, Gulfam quietly left home. “He went away around 1 am without telling us. When we saw he was not there, we started to call him, but his phone was switched off,” Buniyad Ali said.

Having seen what had happened to Zeeshan, he was now gripped by dread, Buniyad Ali said.

“All I wanted was to save him. I called all the lawyers I knew. I wrote letters to police officers and the UP Chief Minister requesting them to not kill my second son,” he said.

Residents of the area said the brothers were quiet and soft spoken, and that Saleem Wastik was not someone who was well known in their neighbourhood. “None of us had ever heard of Saleem Wastik. How could anyone be so angry as to attack him? And even if we assume that the brothers did so, it would be for the courts to decide on their guilt,” said a neighbour requesting anonymity.

Mohammad Fahim, a local grocery shop owner who is a neighbour of the family, said the brothers had finished their high school from a government school in Amroha before joining their father’s carpentry profession.

In 2023, the family had sold a piece of land that they owned in the main market of the town for Rs 12 lakh, and used the money to get their two daughters married.

“Zeeshan came to my shop last month. I asked him how he was doing in Delhi and NCR. He told me that he was making Rs 35,000 a month,” Fahim said.

On Wednesday, a purported video of the alleged attack carried out by the brothers surfaced on social media. In the video, a man purported to be Saleem Wastik can be seen on a sofa at his home office, when two men in kurta-pyjamas enter, their faces covered by the helmets they were wearing.

One of the men can be seen taking out the paper cutter from a pocket of his kurta and slashing at Wastik’s neck. Wastik is dragged to the ground, and hit multiple times with a piece of glass from a broken table. The men leave him lying on the bloody floor, the video purportedly shows.