Zakia Jafri, who transformed her personal loss into a difficult campaign for justice after her husband, Ehsan Jafri, was brutally murdered during sectarian riots in the Indian State of Gujarat in 2002, died on February 2 at home From his daughter to Ahmedabad, India. She was 86 years old.
His death was confirmed by his son Tanveer Jafri.
More than 1,000 people, including the Muslim majority, died in the riots that seized Gujarat, on the west coast of India in 2002. They started on February 27, when a fire killed nearly 60 People on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims in Godhra, a city in Gujarat. The cause of the fire has been disputed.
But while rumors spread that Muslims were responsible for the fire, crowds broke out in large parts of Gujarat, attacking Muslim houses and companies and killing people by hack them and burn them to death. Among the people killed was Ms. Jafri’s husband, who was a union leader, a lawyer and a former deputy.
In a legal battle that has dragged almost two decades, Ms. Jafri accused Narendra Modi, the Indian Prime Minister, who was at the time the head of Gujarat, of “conspiracy and complicity” in the riots.
During all this time, “she remained stoic, desperate, but full of hope,” said Teesta Setalvad, a human rights activist, in an interview. “For me, for us, she was the mother of all the survivors of 2002, carrying the burden of her pain and her loss with dignity and courage and always giving us strength.”
Zakia Naseem Fidahusain Bandookwala was born on January 15, 1939 in Rustampur, a village in the central state of Madhya Pradesh. She was one of the six children of Fidahusain Fakhrali Bandukwala and Amtubai Fidahusain Bandukwala, rich farmers. She moved to Ahmedabad, in the western state of Gujarat, after marrying Mr. Jafri in 1962.
The couple’s home in Ahmedabad was burnt down during the riots in 1969. But instead of leaving the region, Mr. Jafri was involved in politics Fight for the secular traditions of India. He helped establish the Gulberg Society, a complex of Muslim housing in the majority Hindu region.
Mr. Jafri was elected to Parliament as a member of the Party of the Indian National Congress in 1977 – something that no other Muslim of Ahmedabad has never obtained. Ms. Jafri was active in her husband’s public life, said her son, and often appeared with him at events. A black and white photograph that he still took during a meeting of the Congress Party in the 1970s, shows Mr. Jafri to the microphone addressing a room full of men. Mrs. Jafri is the only woman in the crowd.
She became a more important public face after her husband was killed.
During the riots, Gulberg became a carnage site: 70 people remained there. Mr. Jafri was hacked to death in his home because the rest of his family looked for security upstairs.
“Armed with swords, pipes, acid bottles, kerosene, petrol, hockey sticks, stones and tridents, the crowd was without restraint for six hours,” said Human Rights Watch in a report . Ms. Jafri said in an interview that her husband had done Over 200 telephone calls To government and police officials when the crowd met, but had received no help.
During the following years, she accused Mr. Modi and the senior officials of Gujarat of conspiracy and encouragement of riots.
Ms. Setalvad said she met Ms. Jafri in March 2002, just a few weeks after violence. She helped Ms. Jafri and other Gulberg survivors by putting pressure on the government to open investigations into inaction by a police force who, according to them, was under the control of Mr. Modi, and protecting the people who were threatened not to testify as witnesses.
“I no longer have much strength now; I can’t even walk now, “said Ms. Jafri in her 80s in one of her latest television interviews. “But I still go to court whenever it is necessary, whenever they call me. Twenty years have passed and I had no justice. Power is in their hands; What justice will they give them?
The case was finally rejected by the Supreme Court of India in 2022 after the surveys did not reveal any concrete evidence incriminating Mr. Modi. The court initially abstained in 2019 and did it again when he rejected Mrs. Jafri’s appeal. He judged that negligence, or the collapse of the law and the order, was not the same as the plot.
In addition to her son Tanveer, Mrs. Jafri is survived by another son, Zuber; A girl, Nishrin Hussian; And six grandchildren.
After the case was rejected, the government arrested Ms. Setalvad. Her lawyers told court that she had led a “revenge campaign” to defame Gujarat and used Ms. Jafri as a “tool” in the process.
Tanveer Jafri said that his mother had been disappointed, not only by the lack of responsibility, but also by the way his fight for justice had been turned against people like Ms. Setalvad, who had devoted herself to the cause.
But he added: “She took comfort in the fact that future generations will have all these documents to discover the facts.”
