Daanishtha tells The Quint how she was quick to think, act and preserve evidence when everyone wanted to get hold of her.(Photo: Aishwarya S Iyer/The Quint)
"Mere
naam ka matlab akalmand hain (My name means being mindful)," 21-year-old
Daanishtha Siddiqui says with a wide grin. She shot the video which showed how
at least 25 men from the Hindu Gujjar community brutally attacked her family on
Holi in Gurugram's Bhondsi district.
Daanishtha
believes she saved the lives of her family members because she began to shoot
the mindless violence which allegedly began after a heated argument over a cricket
game.
An
FIR has been filed for offences including rioting and attempt to murder, among
others, at the Bhondsi police station. While investigations are underway
Daanishtha tells The Quint how she was quick to think, act, and preserve
evidence when everyone wanted to get hold of her.
by Amazon
She
had woken up that day in her home, around seven kilometers away, in Badshahpur.
She’d
planned on visiting her uncle Sajid’s home that day. Sajid was one of the men
who was most brutally attacked by the mob that day.
As
they day progressed, the boys from the family stepped out for a game of
cricket. The sun was about to set and she was cooking aloo and gobi pakodas
(potato and cauliflower fritters) when she began to hear vehement screams from
not too far away.
She
followed what now sounded like abuses and saw angry men trying to enter her
uncle's home, while her family pushed back.
(Photo: Aishwarya S Iyer/The Quint)
"My
uncle and brothers were looking back and screaming, telling me and my sisters
to lock ourselves upstairs. That we could never know what the men could do to
us if they entered," she says. Daanishtha quickly ran to the floors above
for safety. This is when she heard them say"Pakistani hai ye! Pakistani
hai ye!" repeatedly.
"They
were also abusing us. They all looked out of control, like they were
drunk," she recalls. "They had stones, sticks, and other weapons
while we had nothing in our hands." Some men had managed to push open the
main gates and enter. They hit the men and women, and on occasion children, the
family says.
Shards
of glass, broken beds, blood stains, and torn clothes littered the floor of the
whole house. The house was built barely three years ago, when Sajid decided to
move to Gurugram from Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat district in the hope of finding
better work and pay.
Daanishtha’s
family, including her extended relatives, do the job of repairing home
appliances in and around Bhondsi.
Mi Redmi 6A (Blue, 2GB RAM, 16GB Storage)
21,4215,999 6,999
(Photo: Aishwarya S Iyer/The Quint)
The
only place off bounds for the mob was the terrace now.
Daanishtha
was with her cousins here while her handicapped father, Mohammad Jamshad, was being
moved to an elevated portion of the terrace.
He
asked her if she was filming anything, confused by the question she noticed the
way she was holding her phone.
"That
is when I began shooting the video. When they saw me they got angrier. They
kept saying "Is ladki ko pakdo" (grab this girl) but I didn’t stop
shooting. They began to hide their face and weapons from the camera’s gaze, but
verbally they only got more abusive. Everyone's eyes were on me now," she
said.
(Photo: Aishwarya S Iyer/The Quint)
The
mob had reached the entrance of the terrace.
Now
the only thing that stood between them and Daanishtha was an iron door, and her
cousins who were using all their might to keep that door closed.
One
of them was her elder sister 22-year-old Shaistha. "I was downstairs when
I began to hear them say they wanted to catch hold of some girl. I came up and
I saw my kid sister shooting a video. I was petrified they might kill her but I
didn't ask her to stop," Shaistha says.
(Photo: Aishwarya S Iyer/The Quint)
Similarly,
her 14-year-old sister Muskaan who was also on the terrace said, "I was
scared they’d take her phone away, and then we would have nothing to show as
evidence."
It
was after a minute or so that Daanishtha stopped. "I could have continued
shooting but I had to stop. I thought I would lose what I had already
shot," she said pointing The Quint towards the tiles on the edge of the
balcony where she had hidden her camera phone.
(Photo: Aishwarya S Iyer/The Quint)
"Chilla
bhi main rahi thi, ro bhi main rahi thi aur video bhi main hi bana rahi thi. (I
was the one screaming. I was the one crying and I was also the one shooting the
video.)" How did the video become viral? "I handed it over to my
uncle who forwarded it to people he knew," she says.
As
a child, Daanishtha dreamed of being a doctor. She still wants to fulfill her
dream, but dropped out of school in Class 10 to support her mother at home.
“After
my father became handicapped because of a mishap while he was doing labour
work, I had to start helping my mother at home,” she said, adding that she has
three sisters.
Daanishtha
showed The Quint the ladder her father climbed, to find a place to hide from
the mob. As you climb the ladder, a giant Tricolour comes into view on Sajid’s
roof, waving against the warm sunset.
(Photo: Aishwarya S Iyer/The Quint)
"They
kept saying that we were Pakistanis," Daanishtha says, staring off into
the distance.—The
Quint
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