Jobs gone, Muslims while away time

Usman Ishaq Abdul Kadir is among the jobless. A father of eight, he says he got Rs 8,000 as compensation for his torched shop whereas the panchnama put the damage at Rs 1.31 lakh. ‘‘There are many like me who have nothing to do,’’ he says, wondering how he will clear his debts of over Rs 50,000.

Hanif Ali Sayyed owned an ‘‘auto-electric’’ shop in Polan Bazar before bulldozers flattened it. ‘‘What will I do? I come here to while away my time,’’ he says at the house of Ahmed Hussain Geeteli, a community leader.

Geeteli says that many unemployed persons frequent his house and the rest survive on whatever help the community has to offer. ‘‘Every family has one or two persons without jobs; the bigger the locality the more the number of idle persons,’’ he says.

In Satpul and Muslim Society areas, 1,500 and 2,000 persons are without any jobs. ‘‘We don’t expect any government help, but are not sure what to do,’’ a community leader says.

The forensic report which says that the fire in the Sabarmati Express started from inside has instilled a sense of hope among locals who claim most of those behind bars were falsely implicated.

Except for a half a dozen authorised vendors on the railway station, the rest who operated illegally have disappeared. Thirty-five of them are on the wanted list. In all, there were some 300 of them.