Delhi: “It could happen to any Muslim family,” Afreen Fatima, then 24 years old, told us, 12 hours before her nightmare was realised. 

The government of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Uttar Pradesh accused her father of masterminding a riot in Allahabad, detained her mother and sister, declared their home illegal, and demolished it on 12 June 2020 in a feverish spectacle beamed on new channels. 

Afterwards, reporters picked through the debris left by the bulldozer. 

In the year that followed, the State slapped baseless case after case and a preventive detention order against her father, Javed Mohammad, a businessman and a prominent social activist in the city who had been critical of the BJP amid rising Islamophobia, but also worked well with the local administration over local matters concerning Muslims. 

“A dehumanising year,” is how Fatima described it to us. 

A linguistics graduate of Aligarh Muslim University and Jawaharlal Nehru University, she was then a fiery activist, far more outspoken about the plight of Muslims under the BJP than her mild-mannered father. But as efforts shifted to securing his release from jail, she seemingly stepped back from the frontlines.

When Mohammad was released after securing bail in all eight cases against him after 21 months in jail, he told us, “Is it not the limit? First, they put five cases, then the NSA, then three more, then the Gangster Act, then the Arms Act. It is only because of God’s mercy that I have come out. This is injustice and an atrocity.”

Over three and a half years after authorities arrested him and demolished his family home, citing illegal construction, no formal charges have been filed against the alleged mastermind of the UP riots triggered by a BJP leader's controversial remarks about the Prophet Mohammad. 

The Allahabad High Court has yet to hear the petition filed by Mohammad’s wife challenging the demolition, which was carried out in violation of due process, including the required notice period and the right to contest the order, despite being listed 60 times since July 2022.

Just as lynchings, violence and public humiliation of Muslims have become routine, extrajudicial and punitive demolitions of their homes have also become increasingly common, despite a 2024 ruling of the Supreme Court that state authorities cannot demolish a person’s property merely because they are accused or convicted of a crime, and prohibiting such actions without proper legal procedure.

The spectacle surrounding these demolitions often gives them a celebratory feel, one that appears to carry social sanction, and has earned Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath the nickname “Bulldozer Baba”.

Fatima, now 27, and a researcher with Polis Project, a New York-based non-profit documenting Islamophobia and State oppression around the world, has documented 53 incidents of extrajudicial and punitive demolitions in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi, and Haryana from 2019 to 2024. 

The highest number of incidents was in UP (33), followed by Madhya Pradesh (16), Delhi (3) and Haryana (1). The highest number of houses or structures demolished was in Haryana (1,208), followed by Madhya Pradesh (112), Uttar Pradesh (35) and Delhi (22). 

“While state justifications may vary, from fighting the 'land mafia' to responding to 'riots' or taking action against 'illegal construction', the core logic remains that of collective retribution. In many cases, demolitions target the families of and communities of accused individuals, often before such individuals are even convicted by courts, or even before any legal process has begun,” the report said. 

“Overwhelmingly, the homes reduced to rubble belong to Muslims, often the poorest or the most outspoken against them,” it said. 

In this interview, Fatima reflected on the lasting impact of her house’s demolition, the Allahabad High Court’s failure to hear her mother’s petition, her choice to document other similar demolitions, and the details that resonated most with her from these cases so similar to her own. 

You experienced the demolition of your home, and then you decided to document more.

As someone who has gone through this, we always say Muslims are written about, but Muslims don’t get a chance to write about themselves. Proximity to the violence and injustice brings out narratives that may not come out from a safe distance. I had talked to so many journalists and researchers and repeated the same story over and over, but when the report or story came out, I always felt something was missing. It’s not what I wanted to say. I also wanted to give voice to something like this, and what the state is trying to do. I’m not sure I can do that voice justice, but I’ve tried. 

Have you recovered from the demolition? 

I don’t think it is something that a person recovers from. Of course, life goes on, and we move ahead,d and it becomes a fading memory, but if you think about it, it all feels very fresh. Sometimes it feels like it happened long ago, and sometimes it feels like it just happened. It is a constant back-and-forth. When I talk to my sisters about childhood, it reminds me that the home where those memories are from is no longer there. 

Has it become easier to cope with? 

I went to see the house two months ago after it was broken. After that, every single time I try to remember my life in that home, it is very dark. There is rubble all around. Even if it is a happy memory of me holding my brother’s son, it is still dark. There is rubble on the side. I’m unable to erase the rubble from my memories. I can’t remember my house without the rubble anymore. It is very unsettling for me—why can’t I remember my home without the rubble? 

There were a lot of other things happening at the time: your father was arrested and jailed, your mother and sister were in illegal detention. It must have amplified the trauma.

Actually, what happened to me was the opposite. The trauma of abbu being arrested and not knowing where Ammi and Sumaiya were for 24 hours, and their illegal detention for almost two days. Until abbu was released, we never really had the chance to sit with the fact that our home had been demolished. We pushed the trauma. When abbu was released, we had to relive the fact that he also lost his home. Sometimes, my younger sister and I would place ourselves in abbu’s position. He lost his father, his sister and his home while he was in jail. I would feel my pain is nothing in front of his pain or my mother’s pain, who was separated from her partner for two years. I did not allow myself to grieve the house because abbu was not around. It feels like injustice after injustice. 

You are no longer giving speeches. Has the nature of your activism changed? 

It is more low-profile. If someone tells me to come to a protest, I go. But I’ve always been academically engaged with activism as well. But after the house was demolished, I stepped back from social media because I found it was not useful to tweet and post. No hashtag could stop my house from being demolished. I stopped posting. I wrote papers, and I read a lot. It made more sense to put my energy into research work. There were also abbu’s cases. So we were either with the lawyer or travelling from Allahabad to Deoria to meet abbu. 

What is the delay in your High Court petition against the demolition? 

We filed our petition in July 2022, but the arguments have not started. Initially, every two weeks our date would come in the court, but for some reason or another, the case would not be taken up. We mentioned that it was urgent—it was just us three women, Sumaiya, ammi, and me. I was not married at the time. I can only assume the judge considered it not urgent because the house had already been demolished. If our matter was taken up on mention a few times, the judge did not come back after lunch. The judge will recuse, or the bench will change or summer vacation. The government lawyer will take another date. Some reason or other comes up for the matter not being heard. There was a period when our case was not listed for five or six months. We moved a petition in the Supreme Court seeking that the High Court take up our matter and expedite our hearing. We wrote letters to the Chief Justice of Allahabad. Our matter is before the Chief Justice bench, but the arguments have not started. 

I remember I was in court for abbu’s bail hearing, and the petition was listed the same day. One lawyer remarked that “until the government changes, your matter will not be heard. You will just have to make your peace with it.” It shows that there is some system behind the arguments not starting, but what exactly it is is hard to pinpoint.

What is the prayer?

The prayer is that our home was illegally demolished and that we be compensated and the officials responsible for this be punished. Until we get compensated, we are given a temporary home.  

How did you get started on this work documenting other demolitions?

Initially, it was supposed to be pan-India. I realised it would not be possible because of the regional language. Gujarat and Assam probably are the states with the most demolitions, but there was a language problem. Most of the cases are not reported in English dailies. I stuck with Haryana, Delhi, MP, and UP and compiled the data from 2019 to 2024, reviewing legal documents and reports from other human rights organisations, examining the urban planning laws in these states, and the court decisions. 

What struck you the most about the cases you covered? 

It is the same playbook. When I was speaking to victims from Kanpur and Saharanpur, it felt like a copy-paste of what happened to us. It is strange that it is not apparent to the people around. Like with communal riots, it is the same orchestration of violence. Similarly, the same orchestration goes behind every single demolition, but we are unable to link them. The logic behind it is the same. It is punitive, it is extrajudicial. People like Mukhtar Ansari and Ateeq Ahmed, their criminality is on one side, but does that suspend their right to be treated under the law? It does not. No one’s home should be demolished because they are a criminal. You have to punish me under the law. The victims are from different backgrounds or social strata, but it was chilling to me how similar the cases were.

Governments say the house is an illegal construction. 

In this project, we have only taken cases that were extrajudicial in nature. The house might have been illegal or on encroached land, but did the development authority follow due process? As an individual, I might do something illegal, but can an authority or an official do something illegal? All cases are where some part of the due process is missing; notice was not given, or if it was,s then it was given 30 minutes before. Most demolitions in India happen extra-judicially. Even cases we have not taken up are extra-judicial because development authorities do not follow the law. The other filter was whether this demolition was punitive, to punish this particular individual and their family. 

These demolitions continue despite the Supreme Court ruling.

What does the Supreme Court do to enforce these guidelines? Nothing. The Supreme Court places the onus on individual officers involved in the demolition, but does not question the political logic behind it. In most cases, this individual DM or officer in the development authority is not acting on their own free will. There is some political messaging around demolition. Some violence happens, some riots happen, so someone has to be punished. You satisfy the collective conscience of the state. The Supreme Court did not once question the ideology or logic behind the demolitions. The Supreme Court did mention the punitive nature of demolitions, but it did not mention who is being punished. It takes away from the victims. We are being punished because of our identity, and if the Supreme Court is not going to spell it out, then it serves no purpose. It does very little to challenge the impunity enjoyed by different officers, CMs, ministers, and politicians; a chief minister is called "bulldozer baba" or "bulldozer mama". 

Enforceability is not there, and follow-up is also not there. The Supreme Court guidelines mandate that every state maintain a demolition website (where demolition notices, responses, and orders should be made public), but not a single state does. 

(Betwa Sharma is managing editor of Article 14.)

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