“Whenever I saw images of riots on my mobile phone or TV, I would cry, wondering how one human being could do this to another. But that day, it happened to me. My husband kept saying, ‘Stop it, forgive me, what’s my fault?’ But no one listened. People just kept hitting him.”
Standing next to her husband — who is in a wheelchair, with plastered limbs and almost his entire body wrapped in bandages — this is how a 35-year-old woman victim of Sunday’s (February 1, 2026) communal violence in Chhattisgarh’s Gariaband recalled her family’s ordeal that lasted for several hours. A large mob allegedly unleashed itself on the 10-odd Muslim families of Dutkaiya village, setting their houses on fire and forcing them to flee.
The violence was the fallout of a chain of events that began a few hours earlier when three men, one of them out on bail in a temple desecration case, allegedly assaulted locals.
For the woman, who chose to remain anonymous citing security fears, it was not just the assault on her husband or the arson that she had to endure. The mob also threatened her with sexual assault and she was forced to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ after the attackers issued a chilling warning that they would kill her seven-year-old son otherwise, she claimed.
For several hours, vandalism and arson went on outside their home. As members of the mob proceeded in breaking the main entrance, the woman, her husband and her son had locked themselves in one room while four women and her minor daughter were in another room.
‘No escape’
“I tried to block the door with a cupboard, but they used a full gas cylinder to break it down. He hit the door so hard that it completely blew out. There was no escape. He was inside and brutally beat my husband in front of me. I pleaded with him, but they said, ‘Wait, after this, your turn will come. Let your husband die properly, then it will be your turn, and then it will be your son’s turn,’” the woman told The Hindu at a government hospital in Raipur where her husband is being treated. All other Muslim families from the village have also taken shelter in the State Capital.
She added that there were some policemen near the house but they were stopped by the members of the mob.
“I was continuously calling the police; they were trying to come but were not able to. I felt helpless. The youths in the mob were armed with rods, swords, knives, and sticks. They threw my mobile phone and shattered it. They beat my husband so badly that he fainted. I used a pillow to support him and kept telling him to stay alive. The pillow provided some cushioning, but they then kept stamping him with rods,” she recalled.
As the mob kept referring about revenge for four villagers being assaulted by Arif Qureshi (18) and Salim Khan (23) (both from Dutkaiya) and Imran Siddiqui (18) from Raipur, the woman said her pleas explaining that her own family or other Muslim families of the village had nothing to do with those instances had no bearing.
The men then dragged her away and threatened that they would sexually assault her. “I feared the worst but by then some of the policemen had managed to enter. As they were escorting us and my injured husband away, we were attacked again from the back,” she said.
Sexual assault threat
Another relative of the woman who lives in another house of the same neighborhood in Dutkaiya also had a similar story to share. The 36-year-old said the crowd had threatened both her 15-year-old daughter and herself with sexual assault and were dragging them away when her husband was attacked with a knife in a bid to save them. He sustained injuries on his hand, she said. “At that time, there were four children and eight women, including some of our neighbours whose houses had already been burnt, were in my house. Luckily my husband, despite the injury, managed to take us back and we locked ourselves in another room till the police arrived,” she said.
Both the women said they also lost valuable possessions such as a one-day-old car that was torched or gold jewellery that was allegedly looted. And while they demanded that the perpetrators behind the incident (which also left seven policemen injured) be punished at the earliest, there should be arrangements for their security.
Syed Naved Ashraf from the Raza Unity Foundation, an organisation that is providing relief to these families, said an impartial, transparent, and high-level investigation into the incident was needed.
Gariaband Superintendent of Police Vedvrata Sirmour said on Wednesday (February 4, 2026) that so far seven people had been arrested in connection with the violence. On the concerns raised by the Muslim families about their return and future safety, he said efforts were in sync with the district administration to talk to village elders and create a conducive atmosphere. He added that on Wednesday some of the Muslim residents visited Dutkaiya to collect their belongings.
Published – February 04, 2026 09:42 pm IST
