Ahmedabad, May 22: To put a face to the brutal story of Kausar Bano is to give a voice
to her 70-year-old father. Mercifully, Khaliq Noor Mohammad Sheikh didn't see the mobs
slitting Kausar's womb with a sword, dragging out the unborn child that nestled within her
and burning both in Naroda Patiya on February 28. He had fainted - when he woke up, he
couldn't even find the charred remains of Kausar Bano and her unborn child.

"I found out how my daughter and her baby had been killed after I went to the Shah Alam
relief camp. They could have killed me and spared my pregnant daughter," sobs Sheikh.
"My daughter got married only last year. This would have been her first child. And they
did not even allow it to come into this world."

Sheikh was a paint contractor who earned around Rs 4,000 a month. Until February 28,
he had two houses in Naroda Patiya. He had two children: Kausar, in her early thirties, and
a younger married son.

Kausar's was a love marriage. She and her unemployed husband, Shahid Sheikh, stayed
with her father. Shahid is said to be alive, but nobody at Shah Alam knows his whereabouts.

Sheikh's neighbours, who are also at the relief camp, remember Kausar as a quiet person,
who "would speak only when spoken to". "She wasn't educated, but she had learnt
diamond-cutting and polishing. She didn?t work, though," says her father. His son
Sharmuddin, his wife and two children lived with Sheikh. "We were a 12-member joint family.
My wife's sister and her family of four also stayed with us," he says. Only three of the
12 - Sheikh, his son-in-law and his wife's sister's son - survived.

A day before the massacre, Sheikh says he took Kausar to a hospital in Kalupur for a medical
check-up. "She was complaining of pain. The doctor said she was likely to deliver in a day or
two."

On February 28, Sheikh was leaving for work when he heard loud shouts outside. "
We all tried to flee. The mob hit me with sticks and tried to douse me with petrol. I managed to escape
and reach a nearby dhaba, where I lost consciousness. When I regained consciousness
after 28 hours, I went back to see only ruins.  Some policemen escorted me to a nearby chawl,
from where I was brought to the relief camp."  Reshmabano Nadibbhai Sayed, one of Sheikh's
neighbours, says, "Ever since chacha heard about the gory killing, he has turned insane with
grief." Reshmabano says she witnessed Kausar's killing. "As Kausar was being dragged
out of her home, she kept screaming, pleading with the mob to take away her money, her
valuables, but spare her and her unborn child. But they pulled out the baby and threw it into the
fire along with Kausar's body. When her mother tried  to intervene, she was burnt as well.
When an old  man hears all this, won't he be affected".

Sheikh says he will never return to Naroda Patiya."I will go back to Bangalore, where my
mother-in-law lives. My life is over, but I want to see the murderers of my daughter brought to
book before I die," he says.
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Source:  http://www.indian-express.com