‘How long will I get security’: Hate crime witness fears for safety

It was the hoarse cries of tailor Kanhaiya Lal that broke the concentration of his staffer, Rajkumar Sharma, who was seated on a stool facing the wall in the front room of the tailoring shop and deeply engrossed in stitching a little after 2.30pm on June 28.

“Suddenly, I sensed chaos and heard Lal’s hoarse voice saying ‘bachao (save me)’,” Sharma recalled.

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The 48-year-old tailor turned around to see two knife-wielding men repeatedly striking at Lal’s neck. He pushed his stool away in the extremely congested shop and kicked one of the attackers in the leg. But it hardly made a difference.

“The attacker turned around and took a big swipe at my head with his knife. I ducked and escaped by a few centimetres,” he said.

That afternoon, Sharma’s employer Lal, 47, was hacked to death and another colleague Ishwar Gaud was left critically injured. Sharma was lucky to narrowly escape, but what he witnessed over the next minute or so left him “numb”.

“I couldn’t feel my hands or legs,” Sharma, who worked with Lal over the past eight years, and doubled as a Swiggy delivery partner, told HT.

Sharma is among the two main eyewitnesses of the terror act that led to protests across the country and sent the city under a prolonged curfew. Ever since the crime, he has remained mostly confined to his home under strict police protection.

After a compromise was brokered with the Muslim community who had filed a police case against Lal for sharing a controversial Facebook post, the trio decided to open the shop on June 22, he said. “We thought the problem had ended.”

So, when the two Muslim men walked into the shop on the afternoon of June 28, it was nothing unusual. They were accustomed to receiving a lot of Muslim customers, Sharma said. “They parked their motorcycle and entered the shop carrying two polythene bags with them,” he said.

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Sharma and Gaud were working on their machines seated facing the wall. Lal was seated at the counter of the 8x8 shop that is divided into two halves — the front half for sewing and attending to customers and the inner larger room serving as storage for stitched clothes and goods.

“First I overheard them telling Lal that one of their kurtas was too tight. One of them began offering his measurements while the other asked him about another kurta they had brought along. We continued working,” Sharma said.

Suddenly, Sharma’s attention was snapped by Lal’s shrieks. Upon noticing Lal was being attacked, Sharma said he tried to intervene and landed a futile kick on the leg of one of the attackers. His colleague, Gaud, then stepped in.

“They landed a few blows on his shoulder and head. I saw a deep wound in the back of Gaud’s head,” Sharma said, adding that he pulled Gaud into the inner room and used a cloth to tie his wound to stop bleeding.

When a badly shaken Sharma looked up, he saw the two attackers dragging a motionless Lal to the street outside. “They kept striking their knives on his neck and head. I think they struck him at least four times inside the shop and around 20 times outside,” he said. Lal’s autopsy revealed 26 wounds on his body.

All this lasted five-seven minutes, Sharma said. “After killing Lal, the men hurriedly packed their cloths, jumped on their motorcycle and rode away. One of the cloths they brought with them was left behind.”

A police officer, who did not wish to be identified, said that CCTV footage from the street outside the shop showed other shopkeepers hurriedly downing their shutters.

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Sharma, meanwhile, called a local boy, handed him the key to Gaud’s scooter and asked him to rush him to a hospital. “Lal was already dead. No one could have survived such an attack,” he said.

Gaud, 49, who worked the last decade with Lal and required over 20 stitches to his shoulder and head, is hospitalised. On Thursday, Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot met him at the hospital. “My father is not in a condition to speak now. But he will give his statement as a witness,” said his son, Jatin.

Sharma said the moment the attack begun, he knew the controversial Facebook post was behind it. “I had come across his photograph being circulated on WhatsApp groups. The fear was always there in our minds,” he said.

Sharma might have escaped the attack, but he feels destroyed.

“With Lal gone, I am left with no earning avenue…I cannot even continue with my Swiggy delivery job as I fear for my safety. My two college-going children are left in the lurch,” he said.

Though the policemen tell him that he is guarded well, that hardly matters to Sharma. “How long will I receive security? What must I do with security when I am left with no avenue to take care of my family,” Sharma said, urging the government to step in for him.