Rajsamand/Malda/Kolkata: A wail greets you as you goes near to the house of Gul Bahar Bibi, at Syedpur village in Kaliachak, Malda district in West Bengal. Gul Bahar is wife of Mohammed Ifrazul (Afrazul), who has been murdered gruesomely in Rajsamand in hate crime. In muffled voice she says, “What do I have to say. My husband went to Rajsamand 10 days after Moharram and now they are bringing back his dead body.”
Meanwhile, Ifrazul, the 50-year-old labour from Bengal lynched by one Shambhu Lal. The killer not only hacked and burnt him alive but also filmed the entire episode and later circulated, which is viral now. Shambhu rant against love-jihad after killing Ifrazul.
Between sobs, Gul Bahar says, “Nothing can be worse than this. Not just has been killed in the most gruesome manner, but his character has also been maligned. He used to live there with his son-in-law and had not been married to any Hindu woman. He was 50-years-old with grandchildren. He has been killed just for being a Muslim and nothing else.” She adds that when her husband Ifrazul had been leaving for Rajasmand, where he had been working for 15 years, as a daily labourer, little did she know that the next time it would be his dead body arriving for its last right to be performed.
And when, eNewsroom contacted his son-in-law Mosarraf Khan, who used to live with him. During the telephonic conversation he informed, “My father-in-law had been lured on the pretext of getting work and had been killed in the most gruesome way.” On being asked if he knew, who he had gone with, he says, “No. He had called me saying that he had got some work. It was much later when another relative called me informing that my father-in-law’s phone was unavailable and possibly he had been murdered in the woods.” On being questioned about the love-jihad part, he says, “We used to live together; he hadn’t married any Hindu lady. These allegations are absolutely baseless.”
Back in his village, Syedpur, in Malda, an eerie silence seems to have descended. Most residents of his village recall Ifrazul, the latest victim of increasing hate crime in Rajasthan, as a well natured man. Speaking to eNewsroom, Jewel Choudhary, a villager who knew the victim says, “What is love-jihad? We don’t know what this term means. All that we can now say is that, it’s an easy word used to justify the killing of someone who is in his fifties, has a wife and is even a grandpa. We know Ifrazul since long, and we are sure of one thing that he hadn’t married any Hindu lady. He was a good man.”
In the victim’s village, where the grieving family is awaiting for the dead body, to arrive tomorrow, his wife screams and says, “I want justice. We want the killer to be punished. He can’t be let off so easily.”
