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Journalism of Courage
When a team of officials from the Jammu Development Authority (JDA) demolished his single-storey house in the Narwal area of the city on Thursday morning, life came full circle for 72-year-year Ghulam Qadir Daing.
In the early 1990s, leaving his home and family behind, Daing had fled nearly 200 km from Doda’s Bhalesa to Jammu with his eldest son, apprehensive of terrorists taking him away and forcing him to join them, like other youths in the area.
As he sat on Thursday amidst the rubble of his house, a neighbour, Kuldeep Sharma, consoled him, offering him his own 5-marla land.
With the visuals of Daing and his son Arfaz, a local journalist, going viral on social media, former BJP president Ravinder Raina visited them Friday and assured all possible help. Referring to the Prime Minister Awas Yojna for urban poor, Raina said: “We are those who provide houses to the poor and not demolish them.”
Senior Congress leader Raman Bhalla also came to sympathise with the family.
The JDA has defended the demolition, saying the Daing house was built on the authority’s land. Vice-Chairman Rupesh Kumar said they had sent the first notice to the family on October 29.
However, the Daings and their neighbours point out that they had been living on the plot for nearly 35 years. The eldest son with whom Daing left Bhalesa is now a driver with the J&K Police.
On the defensive over demolitions of old structures in the Union Territory, having stalled a Bill by the PDP to check these in the last Assembly Session, J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah slammed the Lieutenant Governor administration over such measures, calling them “a conspiracy” to “malign” his government.
“The officers posted by Raj Bhavan use bulldozers independently, without the elected government’s permission and without consulting the minister concerned,” the CM said.
Challenging the JDA CEO to publish a list of illegal encroachers in newspapers, Abdullah said: “Is there only this single place in Jammu where allegations of encroachment have been levelled? I have asked the department to furnish the full list of illegal encroachment on JDA land. I also want to see why this single person was targeted by the authorities and if his religion is the reason for that.”
Daing talked about the fear the family lived under in Bhalesa as the border district came under terrorist influence in 1991-92. Some youths were back after arms training in Pakistan and moved around in groups, visiting homes and taking away able-bodied men, some barely in their teens, to join their ranks.
Daing said he ran a grocery shop on a plot given to him by a Hindu neighbour. “Though my eldest son was then only 12, he was tall and healthy. Fearing they might abduct him too, I rode a cycle with him over 30 km to Thathri, from where we boarded a bus for Jammu.”
With hardly Rs 200-300 in their hand, they made their way to Narwal Mandi, which he had visited before, and took a room on rent and slept on borrowed gunny bags, Daing said.
Few people lived in the area, hardly 5 km from Old Jammu city centre, he recalled, and there was wild growth everywhere. Even the Narwal mandi for vegetables and fruits came up later.
After the landlord asked them to vacate, the father and son moved to an open space, where the Narwal Police Station now stands. He would buy rice, and cook food in the open for the two of them. Slowly, truckers started stopping by for food, and Daing first bought a rehri (pushcart) and then made a wooden khokha (structure) over it where he opened a small food stall.
As his business took off, others put up carts in the area, with the numbers growing to 100-150. No one asked them to leave, and so they gradually settled there. Daing’s wife and other two children who were still back in Bhalesa joined them.
Some time later, Daing said, he bought land from a local and built a house, and they never even visited Bhalesa after that.
Calling the demolition of the Daing house “a routine exercise” and part of the drive to remove encroachments from JDA land, which was still continuing, Vice-Chairman Kumar said that after the Daings didn’t reply to their first notice, they sent a second one on November 18. According to him, Daing submitted then in writing that the Narwal house did not belong to him or his family.
He also pointed out that Arfaz had built another house on “state land” in Bhatindi, which was recently demolished by some other agency.
Arfaz, who works for a local news portal and could be seen in the viral videos asking people for help as their Narwal house was being demolished, claimed he had purchased the Bhatindi land from some locals and only came to know later that it was State land. He also said that the Narwal house belonged to his father.
Arfaz’s elder brother, who works for the police, also has a house in Bhatindi.
The people gathered around the rubble of the Daing house in Narwal Friday, including people from both communities, questioned the JDA action. Why was a poor family being targeted when powerful and influential people occupied hundreds of acres in Jammu city and the outskirts, many demanded to know.
While sympathising with the Daings, former BJP state chief Raina claimed that the demolition orders had not come from the L-G administration but the Abdullah government.
Hailing Kuldeep Sharma for offering his land to Daing, Raina said: “This is our Jammu and Kashmir, where if trouble comes to a Muslim family, the Hindu neighbour comes to its help… Mazhab nahin sikhata aapas mein bair rakhna (Religion doesn’t tell us to harbour differences)… This is our Hindustan’’.
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