Conditions in the Camps  
One of the camps visited by Human Rights Watch, at Dariyakhan Ghummat in the Shahibaug area of Ahmedabad, was formerly a municipal school for first to seventh graders and has been hosting people since February 28. The school was also used as a camp during the 1985 riots. As of the fourth week of March, the camp housed a total of 5,100 people though the numbers rose and fell depending on security conditions outside. Between March 16 and 19 for example, immediately after the March 15 events in Ayodhya that many feared would lead to more attacks, the camp absorbed 2,500 more people. Each classroom in the municipal school building, approximately fifteen by fifteen feet in size, housed fifty to sixty people, mostly women and children. The men slept outside under makeshift shelters. For over a week following the attacks, residents lived and slept in the same clothes in which they fled. Many left their homes without even shoes.  

At Chartoda Kabristan, Gomtipur, the second camp visited by Human Rights Watch in Ahmedabad, residents were living in the most inhumane conditions. The camp is situated in a Muslim cemetery (kabristan). Many of its 6,000 residents were literally sleeping in the spaces between the graves. One resident remarked, "Usually the dead sleep here, now the living are sleeping here."²⁴⁵  

Both camps were receiving assistance from NGOs and Muslim organizations in Gujarat, as well as limited food rations from the government. No police posts had been set up in the majority-Muslim camps in Ahmedabad and no security had been provided to camp residents, leaving residents unprotected and unable to register formal complaints-to be recorded as FIRs-with the police.  

²⁴⁵ Human Rights Watch interview, forty-five-year-old male resident of Chartoda Kabristan camp, Ahmedabad, March 23, 2002.