Scene one: A BJP fact-finding team of five MPs and two MLAs enters the shop of Varun Singhal in Chowk Bazar of Kairana tehsil in Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli. Singhal takes them to the first floor that has sofas and chairs. His four servants offer them water, cold  drinks and biscuits.

Raghav Lakhanpal Singh, the MP from Saharanpur, starts speaking: “See, the fact is that nobody can dare to speak about such things. We understand this very well. But don’t you worry. We have come to you to solve your problems.”
Some people raise slogans: “Pakistan murdabad, Hindustan zindabad.”

The meeting in the shop ends in 10 minutes.

Background:  Unidentified criminals had killed Vinod Singhal, elder brother of Varun, on August 16, 2014. The local shopkeepers had staged a dharna to mount pressure on police to identify and arrest the criminals. Saurabh Goyal, the brother-in-law of Vinod, said the police had first arrested one youth, Amit Kumar, and later, another youth, Mohammad Furquan. They are out on bail now. 

Hukum Singh, the local BJP parliamentarian who has stoked a controversy by furnishing discredited lists of people who were forced to leave Kairana by extortionists from a particular community, had not taken up this case with the police before.

“Vinod had never received a threat call for extortion,” said Saurabh.    

********* 

Scene two: Mohammad Ali, a property dealer, is standing at the Chowk Bazar crossing with half a dozen shopkeepers of the minority community, waiting for the fact-finding team to come out of Varun’s shop.

“I want to tell them that both Hindus and Muslims are victims of criminals. I want to ask Prime Minister Narendra Modi through these MPs and MLAs what happened to his slogan of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas,” Ali says aloud.

Damodar Saini, a local BJP leader, comes out of Varun’s shop. 

Ali tells Saini: “Let me talk to the team.”

Saini replies: “It is not a public programme. It is the BJP’s programme. We cannot let you meet them at the moment. You can come some other time.”

Later, Ali told this reporter that if 10 Hindus had left Kairana, 100 Muslims had also migrated. But they went in search of better jobs and more profitable businesses.

“For a person sitting in Delhi or Lucknow, it may sound horrible that people from Kairana have fled to Haryana’s Panipat in fear of the oppressors of a particular community. But, my dear friend, Panipat is only 25km from Kairana. We go there for shopping and for jobs. Babuji (Hukum Singh) was spreading rumours that the criminals of a particular community have been forcing businessmen to pay, which is a lie.”

**********

Led by BJP legislative party leader Suresh Khanna, the seven-member fact-finding team reached Kairana today on the directive of party president Amit Shah.

Their brief was to prepare a report on the basis of the allegation of Hukum that several hundred families have fled from there in recent years in fear of “extortionists and oppressors from a particular community”. 

The MP had issued a list of 346 families on June 8 and 63 on June 15, claiming that they had either fled from Kairana or are planning to leave. The district administration had said several families mentioned in the lists had left Kairana between 10 and 15 years ago.

The team met a dozen families on the list. “We have assured all support to the people who are thinking of fleeing. Earlier, we used to believe that there is a jungle raj in Uttar Pradesh. But now after meeting people in Kairana, I can say that criminals are ruling  the state,” said Satyapal Singh, Baghpat MP and a former police chief of Mumbai.

Reminded that the Kairana MP has been blaming a particular community, the Baghpat MP said:  “I am talking about the criminals.”

Hukum, standing beside Satyapal in his palatial house in Mayapur locality of Kairana, said: “There are only Hindus on my lists. And those who have victimised or victimising them are Muslims. I also want to make it clear that I have verified my list.”

Some residents said the lists and the visit of the fact-finding team had charged up the atmosphere.

Mohammad Kamil, a farmer from Manna-Mazra village,  said: “Hukum Singh was the MLA of Kairana seven times in the past. He was also the BJP legislative party leader and a cabinet minister in the state. But we never heard him speak against Mulayam Singh Yadav and his Samajwadi Party. They are very good friends and do everything after discussing with each other.” 

Kamil claimed that in a 2014 bypoll, Hukum had supported SP’s Nahid Hasan.

“The Kairana MP was against BJP candidate Anil Chauhan because of some dispute. Now he wants to field his daughter Mriganki Singh from the Kairana Assembly seat. Hasan is willing to shift to the adjoining Nakud Assembly seat. While such gimmicks would make it easy for his daughter to win in the 2017 Assembly elections, the voters in the state would be polarised between the SP and the BJP,” Kamil explained.

It is common knowledge that the Samajwadi Party banks on the Muslim votes in Uttar Pradesh.

A BJP leader echoed Kamil. “His daughter is already meeting people in the constituency,” the local BJP leader said on condition of anonymity.