Delhi hospital treats, provides refuge to Muslims amid deadly violence

NEW DELHI: As deadly violence erupted in the northeast of New Delhi this week, with armed mobs rampaging the streets, a small hospital located in a densely packed Muslim neighbourhood found itself at the epicentre of the unrest.

Al-Hind Hospital, in the riot-torn Mustafabad neighbourhood, was flooded with patients this week, and it has also become a place of refuge for people whose homes were burned or destroyed.

At least 38 people were killed and hundreds more injured in the worst sectarian violence in Delhi in decades, as groups of Hindus and Muslims clashed.

The violence began after weeks of protests over a citizenship law that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government introduced in December, which eases the path to Indian citizenship for minority groups from neighbouring Muslim-majority countries.

Critics say the law is biased against Muslims and undermines India’s secular constitution.

On Thursday people were still trickling in, saying they had suffered acid attacks and beatings with rods.

Doctors described being overwhelmed on Monday and Tuesday when dozens of wounded streamed into the 15-bed, two-storey building. Some were carried on people’s shoulders and others on wooden carts, stretching the hospital’s resources to the limit.

Many medicines ran out, as did oxygen supplies. But the flow of patients didn’t stop, said doctor Mehraj Ekram.

“We were all crying as we treated them. For the rest of my life, I will not be able to shake those days from my mind,” he said. “The brutality with which people had been beaten, it’ll never leave me.”

“At one point, we had to pull the shutters down, because we could not take in more people,” he said, tears welling up in his eyes.

AMBULANCES BLOCKED

M.A. Anwar, a local doctor who set up the hospital two years ago to make up for the lack of good primary care in the area, said the facility was only built to give patients basic initial treatment.

On the floor below lay 26-year-old Muslim Shabana Parveen, who had given birth after being beaten while heavily pregnant at her home on Tuesday.

She went into labour that day, and a Hindu neighbour took her to safety, she said.

“A mob came into my home and hit me with rods on my stomach. I didn’t think my baby would survive,” she said, as her rosy-cheeked infant yawned beside her. “I don’t know where I’ll go. We’ve lost everything.”