Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
On Friday, a worried Rupachan Ali (33) and his wife Bimala Khatoon sat in their rented under-construction house, clutching their government IDs — Aadhaar card, voter ID, National Register of Citizens (NRC) certificate — afraid that someone might question their identity.
The couple from Assam lived in Malesamau, barely one-and-a-half kilometres from the upscale Gomti Nagar locality in Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow.
A day earlier, they, along with three others from the state, were grilled by BJP Rajya Sabha MP Brij Lal while they were sweeping a road. The MP had uploaded a video of himself stopping the five workers in Gomti Nagar Extension, accusing them of belonging to Bangladesh and labelling them “ghuspaithiya (infiltrators)”.
Asked about the video, Rupachan said, “We were just doing our regular job, when we were suddenly stopped by a sahab. He asked questions and made a video. Someone showed the video to my mother back in the village, who called me and asked me to come back as she was worried about us.”
Asked if he would go back, he said, “No, we will not run. We have all the documents and we have not done anything wrong. I have a loan to pay. We tried to tell this to the Sahab as well that we have the NRC document but he did not listen. The document has been given to us by the government and we have all the copies with us.”
In the video, uploaded on his Facebook account on Thursday, Lal grilled them about their identities.
The workers said they hail from different villages in Assam. But Lal replied, “Yeh batate Assam ke hain lekin hain yeh sab Bangladeshi… Woh Bangladesh jo aaj Pakistan ki bhasha bolta hai (They say they are from Assam, but they are Bangladeshi. The same Bangladesh that speaks the language of Pakistan).”
Standing at the entrance to his home, Rupachan said he had come to Lucknow about one-and-a-half years ago for work on the advice of a fellow resident in his village, Numberpara.
He said they had to come far from home to pay back a Rs 2.5 lakh loan, which they couldn’t do with what they earned from farming.
His mother and elder son are living in the village. Husband and wife send half their earnings to them and to pay off the loan.
His two other children, an 8-year-old daughter and 6-year-old boy, live with them in Lucknow. They study in a nearby government school.
Bimala, however, worried about their safety after the video went up. Apart from sweeping roads, she also works as a domestic help in one of the neighbouring colonies and earns about Rs 8,500 a month.
Half a kilometre away, Sanwra Begum — who was also in the video — lived with her husband, Mohd Afzal Hussain.
She claimed to have lived in Lucknow for over two decades, working as a cleaner in different localities over the years.
“We are from Debradi village in Assam’s Barpeta district. I not only have the NRC document but a PAN card, Labour card and an Ayushman Bharat card issued to me in my village,” she said, while her husband showed the IDs.
“We have been working here for years but it is the first time that we have been questioned like this by someone,” she added.
Hussain, who said he works with a door-to-door garbage collection agency, added that he had come to the city at the age of 7.
He said about a month ago, police had come to verify their identities and they had submitted documents at the local police station.
Asked about the viral video, he said their family does not have a “bada phone (smartphone)” and they have not been able to see it, else they would have been worried.
“I have worked here all my life. We will show all our documents if anyone asks. But we will not run from here as this is the only work we have known all our life,” Hussain said.
On Friday, Pankaj Shukla, Lucknow Municipal Corporation’s zonal sanitation officer for Zone 4, said, “We tried to trace these sanitation workers, but the agency deployed for sanitation of main roads in the Zone 4 area, where the video concerned was shot, denied that they are their employees. There could be a possibility that the workers were deployed by other local contractors, who have been given the contract of cleaning the sub-lanes…”
The Indian Express later spoke to the company that had hired these workers. Ranvir, Director of Lions Security Services, which has the contract for cleaning in the internal lanes, said they were daily-wage labourers and they stopped coming after their permanent employees returned.
“As our regular workers, who are all registered and wear a proper uniform, were on leave, our local supervisor hired these workers on a daily basis from the nearby jhuggi-jhopri for Rs 300 a day…,” claimed Ranvir.
Stay updated with the latest - Click here to follow us on Instagram
