Rohtak blames no caste; loss was collective

Geetanjali Gayatri

Tribune News Service

Rohtak, February 18

A day of rumour-mongering, sporadic clashes, the widening divide between Jats and Punjabis and arson had painfully inched towards the afternoon on February 19 last year when Vikas Barak of the Bharat Gun House decided to call it a day. There was no semblance of rule of law in the city, where occasional shrill cries of the protesters escalated tension and news of growing road blockades trickled in. The place had been a powder keg since the peaceful pro-reservation Jat stir had taken a turn for the ugly and the total collapse of the administration only added to the volatility on ground.

At 8 pm, Barak received a call that his showroom was ablaze. With a few friends, he hurried to save his stock only to find that the protesters had found their way into his set-up and were trying to take away weapons. It was a windy night and the curtains in the gun house were being swallowed by the fast-spreading fire.

“We pulled down the curtains to contain the blaze, snatched whatever weapons we could from the protesters inside our premises, quickly gathered our wits to pull out the weapon stock in the gun house, loaded it in a car and took it to safety. We lost 10 weapons, of which three were those of the public. It was a free-for-all on the roads,” he recalls. That was the last image of the night for Barak and his friends, who made a hasty exit as protesters went on a rampage, looting everything and setting shops ablaze on the old national highway.

A day later, on February 20, Amit Badhwar was at his residence, participating in a ‘havan’. It was his son’s birthday. He left it midway after a frantic call from his security guard alerting him about a possible attack from a mob marching in the direction of his car agency.

“I tried a number of routes to get to my showroom, but road blockades had mushroomed overnight. Ultimately, I gave up and asked my staff to get to a safe place. They hid themselves on a terrace and said men armed with bricks, stones, lathis and weapons had laid siege to the showroom. I knew all would be lost, but kept the information to myself,” he says.

Three days later, when he mustered the courage to visit his showroom, he found that the showroom and workshop were gutted, the spare parts inventory was looted or burnt and vehicles were damaged. “It was a huge loss, nearly Rs 32 crore. We are still rebuilding ourselves,” he explains.

Policemen, who were around a fortnight ago, are nowhere to be found now, as the Jat agitation is gradually spreading and donning a threatening mantle.

Ajay Kumar, who owns a garments store on the old national highway, managed to save his store by pleading with the protesters.

Jats suffered damage to property and so did non-Jats, which is why the people of this city don’t blame any one particular caste. Ask Ved Prakash, whose showroom of watches was gutted after looting, or shopkeepers of any of the 20 shops that were set on fire that night along the old national highway, they all agree that the protesters belonged to one caste, one religion — arsonists — nothing more.

Though compensation has been slow to come by and has been slashed and cut, they are all sure they will survive, they will rise again, but they remain shaken to the core with images that seem to have frozen in their minds. The renewed Jat agitation, the collapsing talks of protesters with the Haryana Government and the repeated threats of an intensified struggle are doing little to help. They are sleepless in Rohtak.