Rahul Dholakia’s award-winning film Parzania tells the story of Rupa and Dara Mody, a Parsi couple whose son Azhar went missing after a mob attacked and burnt down former Congress MP Ehsan Jaffri’s home in Ahmedabad’s Gulbarga Society in 2002.Muzaffer, too, went missing that day, from the same home.His is a story that could put Parzania in the shade. A Muslim child torn away from his parents during the 2002 communal massacres was weaned by a Hindu family who brought him up as their own after a kind policeman found him wandering in the debris. Now at age nine, he cannot recall his biological parents who were searching for him all these years, and does not want to leave his Hindu parents. It goes back to those horrific six hours of February 28, 2002 when the post-Godhra knives were out at the Gulbarga Society, a lower middle-class Muslim neighbourhood of Vatva. When the din and screams had died down, and the dust settled on 38 scattered dead bodies, there was no sign of some 31 more — missing, unaccounted. Among them, a two-and-a half year old boy, Muzaffer, son of Mohammed Salim Shaikh, whose mother and sister were butchered that day by the mob that killed Jaffri, the former MP who gave them refuge. Muzaffer and Shaikh’s sister Firoza had vanished in the mayhem and the despairing Shaikhs had almost lost all hope until last week, when the Special Investigation Team deputed by the Supreme Court told them Muzaffer was alive, as Vivek Vikram Patni, in Saraspur. It was social actvist Teesta Setalwad who had tipped off the SIT about the boy rescued from the riot, got it to crossmatch his DNA with the Shaikhs. It tallied. “Two days after the took the samples, the SIT officers called us to Gandhinagar and said the DNA matched. We found Muzaffar again, I couldn’t thank Allah enough. I was trying to accept that maybe I won’t find my son again, maybe he was dead. And now I have found him again,” says Zebunissa, trying to figh back her tears. Then came the blow. Muzaffar was too young to remember his father and mother whom he had left at a little after age two. He did not want to go with them, and the Patnis did not want to give him up ither. The Metropolitan Court here allowed the boy to go with the Patnis. “Manine che saal baad apne bete ko dekha court me aur ek minute ke liye baat bhi nahin kar saki. Aap mera dard samajhiye. Itne saalelo me ke baad maine apne aap ko sambhaal liya tha, lekin aab apne bete ko dekhne ke baad main nahin ruk sakti. (I will always be indebted to the family who looked after him. They can even come to our house anytime and meet him, we will take him to his old house whenever he wants. But we want him with us.),” she says. Her husband choked when he recalled the riot that turned his world upside down. “We looked at all the places possible. Kept checking with the crime branch. They always said that they will inform me as soon as anything happens. We were in Dariyakhan Ghummat relief colony, I did not have a job but we kept looking for Muzaffar,” he says.“We kept my sister and Muzaffar at Ehsan Jaffri’s house thinking that being an ex MP, he would have protection. I had reached there around 9.30 am. Soon a group of people surrounded the building and started killing, cutting and burning people. It all ended around 3.30-4 when the polce came and drove them away. After that all that was left was burnt, mutilated bodies. My sister and son were missing. I found my mother’s body,” he says.Mohammad says he just cannot give up. “We will go to the High Court and even above it if required. Since that day at Gulberg Society, when I did not find him among the dead and burnt bodies lying in the courtyard, I have been waiting for the day when I could see him again. Now that I have found him, I will get him back. He is my blood.” The Patnis, on the other hand are in no mood to budge. For them Vivek, who studies in Class III and chants the Gayatri Mantra flawlessly, is their only son. For Meena Patani, his foster mother, he is all she has got, after Vikram, her husband passed away in 2004. Nayan Patni, Vikram’s brother says that they do not want any media intrusion in the matter. He says, “The boy is under a lot of stress with so many mediapersons coming after him. He had to be taken to a doctor. The court has ruled in our favour, please leave us alone.” Says Setalvad, who helped trace the boy: “We had come to know of this case about two years ago. The police had not been doing anything about it so we went before the SIT. I don’t know how the case will now progress, we don’t want the child to face any more trauma from this.”
