BHOPAL- Six months after the riot hit town of Khargone began limping back to normalcy, a new controversy has
exposed the eroded trust between the two communities.
A trust run by a group of Hindus used an Urdu name, appointed a Muslim manager and intimidated Hindus to purchase their land at throwaway prices. Islamophobia was the tool.
Years later, the organisation is back in the limelight after members of another trust, started by the same founder, have complained of misuse of their funds. In the complaint to the Khargone police they have alleged that an organisation named Tanzeem-E-Zarkhez which was renamed to PC Mahajan Foundation, used their money to buy lands.
Over half a dozen farmers of the Rajpura panchayat, who sold their nearly 50 acres of land because of the “fear of Muslims” claim that they were tricked by Ravi Prakash Mahajan, who owns both the trust.
A complaint had been filed by advocate Sudheer Kulkarni in May 2016 to Khargone collector after a few farmers approached him.
The farmers allege that men employed by the organisation called Tanzeem-E-Jarkhez bought land from them at cheap rates back in 2002-2003 by telling them that the area will be used to establish a Muslim colony with a butcher house and a graveyard near their home, that will force them to leave. The land is now being used to build a housing colony that has no Muslim residents.
The Rumour
Fifty-year-old Ram Narayan Kushwaha, a resident of of Rajpura village, told BOOM that in 2004-05 a strong rumor gripped in the nearby villages that a Muslim organisation is opening a butcher house and have purchased most of the lands close to the village. The rumour that this Muslim organisation will force Hindu villagers to evict spread like wildfire.
“In fear, many of the villagers including my brother sold his land which he had inherited from the family and became landless,” Ram Narayan said.
He remembers an agent called ‘Bablu Khan’ who would often visit their village to persuade the landowners to sell off their empty lands.
“Once they open a butcher house, your land will be of no use and you will be compelled to sell it at a cheaper rate,” he remembers Khan repeating this to the villagers.
“My brother fell into his trap and sold four acres of land at a meager amount,” he said.
Another farmer of Rajpura village, 65-year-old Nand Kishore Kushwaha, too, claimed that an agent persuaded him to sell off the land. “Zakir came with a broker who told me that my land is surrounded by his five acres of land that is going to be used to open a butcher house for Muslims,” he told BOOM, narrating the incident that happened in 2004-05. “Sell it off else your land will be surrounded and may not be useful,” he remembered being told.
“Seeing no way out, I sold five acres of my land for Rs 80,00,” he said. Nand Kishore said he got only Rs 40,000.
Deepak Kushwaha of Rajpura village told BOOM that his father sold nine acres of land to Tanzeem-E-Zarkhez at a throwaway price because many of the villagers had already sold their land to them. Similarly, Nanu Kushwaha sold around 20 acres of land to the organisation.
Ram Narayan Kushwaha said that the land was sold to Tanzeem-E-Jarkhez and the registry was done in English. “Later we came to know that the Muslim organisation was renamed after PC Mahajan Foundation and all the lands belong to them now,” he said.
This story was originally published in boomlive.in . Read the full story here