Mallika Begum (right) with her son. Picture by Amit Kumar

Bhagalpur, May 17: The NDA government’s recent move to complete the unfinished rehabilitation work of the Bhagalpur riot victims may have rekindled hopes of some of them but the majority termed it an “eyewash”.

For 38-year-old Mallika Begum, the lone survivor of the Chanderi massacre during the 1989 riots, the move is nothing but a political gimmick. On March 23 this year, district magistrate Narmadeshwar Lal sacked Mallika, a Grade IV employee in the office of the district magistrate since August 10, 2007.

She was among many other daily wage labourers, whose services were terminated on the direction of the state government.

Mallika is the sole witness of the communal carnage at Chanderi village, hardly 9km from the district headquarters, that took place on October 26, 1989. She was hardly 16 years old when she witnessed the brutal killing of 50 people, including many women and children. Rioters hacked her right ankle before throwing her into a village pond along with other bodies.

Mallika’s tragedy did not end there.

A CRPF jawan, Taj Mohammad, rescued an unconscious Mallika, from the pond more than nine hours after the incident. Taj, hailing from Kashmir, later married her in 1990 and the couple had two children — a girl and a boy.

“By 1993, Taj fled and snapped relations with me. To compound matters, he also took away Rs 55,000, which I had received as compensation,” she said. In spite of losing everything, she somehow managed to live, in a rented house near Pankhatoli in the city.

“My ancestral home in Chanderi was destroyed and even though Tata constructed a rehabilitation colony, no Muslims dared to enter the village owing to presence of influential people,” she said.

She managed to build a two-room house at Sadaruddin Chowk, Ahmed Colony in Bhagalpur city, where she has been staying since 2002.

Mallika has received Rs 1.4 lakh and another Rs 1.25 lakh as compensation from the state government. “On July 30, 2007, I was summoned by then DM Vipin Kumar. The Bhagalpur sub-divisional officer came to my house and offered me a public distribution shop here. But I declined the proposal as I was not in a position to run it,” she said. She was later asked to join his office as a Grade IV daily wage labourer.

“On March 23, I received a termination letter. I called on the DM at his janata darbar on March 25. The DM told me that the state government instructed him to do the same,” she sobbed. Mallika used to earn Rs 2,652 a month. The DM’s office did not give her any appointment letter. “Vipin Kumar only signed on my job application in lieu of a PDS shop on July 30, 2007,” she said. Not a single person at the DM’s office was in a position to say why Mallika was appointed temporarily.

“My daughter, Fatima Naz (20), is studying Intermediate arts at a college in New Delhi. She was taken by former IPS and social worker Harsamandar who runs a non-governmental organisation, Aman Biradari, there. But I am very worried about my son, Imtiyaz (18), who took his matriculation examination this year,” she said.

Mallika distributed a major amount of money that she received among her cousins for helping her in crisis. Mallika is spending sleepless nights pondering over her past and wondering about children’s future.

Lal was not available for comment but sources at DM’s office said Lal had nothing to do with the termination.

Mallika vows to fight her case, as she has been doing for the past two decades.