Zakia Jafri, who sought justice to the victims of Indian riots, dies in 86

Zakia Jafri, who turned her personal loss into an arduous campaign for justice, died after her husband, Eksan Jafri, was brutally killed during sectarian riots in Gujarat in 2002, on February 2 at her daughter’s home in Ahmed Abad, India. It was 86.

She confirmed her death by her son Tanvir Jafri.

More than 1,000 people, most of whom are Muslims, died in riots that attract Gojarat, on the western coast of India, in 2002. They started on February 27, when a fire killed nearly 60 people on a train carrying Hindus to the Hindu pilgrims Godra, a town in Gojarat. The cause of the fire was disputed. However, with the spread of rumors that Muslims were responsible, the mob broke out through large parts of Googists, attacking Muslim homes and companies, and killing people Hate and burned them to death. Among the dead, Mrs. Jafri’s husband, who was the leader of the union, a lawyer and a former member of Parliament.

In a legal battle that lasted nearly two decades ago, Mrs. Jafri Narindra Modi, the current Prime Minister of India, who was at the time, was the leader of Gojarat, “conspiracy and incitement” in riots.

At all this time, I stayed in an interview, “I stayed, desperate, but optimistic,” in an interview. “For me, for us, the mother of all survivors was in 2002, and she bears the burden of her pain and her loss of dignity and stability and always gives us power.”

Zakia Naseem Fidahusain Bandookwala was born on January 15, 1939, in Rustampur, a village in the state of Madehya Pradesh Central Indian state. She was one of the six children of Fidahusain Fakhrali Bandukwala and Amtubai Fidahusiain Bandukwala, wealthy farmers. She moved to Ahmed Abad, in the Western Gujarat state, after her marriage to Mr. Jafri in 1962.

The house of the couple was burned in Ahmedabad during the riots in 1969. But instead of leaving the area, Mr. Jafri became involved in politics. The struggle for secular traditions in IndiaAnd it helped establish the Golburg Association, an Islamic housing complex in the Hindu majority area.

He was elected to Parliament as a member of the Indian National Congress Party in 1977 – something that no other Muslim from Ahmed Abad did not achieve. Her son said that Mrs. Jafri was active in her husband’s public life, and she often appeared with him in the events. One of the black and white images that are still captured, at the Congress Party meeting in the 1970s, shows Mr. Jafri in the microphone, which addresses a room full of men. Mrs. Jafri is the only woman in the crowd.

She became a more prominent public face after her husband was killed.

During the riots, Gulberg became the extensive massacre site, leaving nearly 70 people. Mr. Jafri was hacked to death at his home, where the rest of his family sought safety on the upper floor.

“Armed with swords, tubes, acid bottles, kerosene, gasoline, hockey sticks, stones and stars, the mob has not been restricted for six hours,” Human Rights Watch said in a report. In one interview, Mrs. Jafri said that her husband had been conducted More than 200 phone calls To the government and police officials with a mob grouping, but they have not received any help.

In the following years, Mr. Modi and Gogharat accused senior officials of conspiring and inciting riots.

Mrs. Siefad said that she met Mrs. Jafri in March 2002, just weeks after violence. Mrs. Jafri and other survivors of Golburg helped by pressing the government to open investigations into failure by the police force, who confirmed that she was under the control of Mr. Modi, and to protect people who are threatened with not martyrdom as witnesses.

“I don’t have much power now. Mrs. Jafri, indeed, in her eighties, said in one of the last TV interviews:” I can’t walk yet. “But I still go to court whenever that is required, whenever they call me. Twenty years have passed and I have not received justice. Power in their hands. What justice will they give? “

The case was eventually rejected by the Indian Supreme Court in 2022 after investigations failed to reveal concrete evidence criminalizing Mr. Modi. The court had initially forgiven him in 2019, and she did so again when she refused to appeal Mrs. Jafri. She has eliminated that neglect, or the collapse of law and order was not the same conspiracy.

In addition to her son Tanvir, Mrs. Jafri survived by another son, Zuber; Daughter, Publisahs Al -Hassi; And six grandchildren.

After rejecting the case, the government arrested Mrs. Siefad, as the lawyers told the court that she launched a “campaign of revenge” to distort Googa and used Mrs. Jafri as a “tool” in this process.

Tanvir Jafri said that his mother was disappointed, not only because of the lack of accountability, but by the way her fighting for justice was converted into people like Mrs. Stefad, who devoted herself to the case.

He said: “I took condolences, in the fact that future generations will get all these documents to discover the facts.”