Two days after fleeing for his life from Nahan town in southern Himachal Pradesh, Savej Qureshi, a 32-year-old Muslim garments shopkeeper, said that his heart was broken.

“We were thinking of changing the address on our Aadhar card to Nahan. We have fallen in love with Nahan and its people all these years. But my heart is broken now,” said Qureshi, speaking from his village in western Uttar Pradesh, which borders Himachal Pradesh.

“When you are physically attacked, blood is visible. But when your heart is attacked, it gives invisible wounds,” he said.

A WhatsApp status message of his younger brother, Javed Qureshi, showed Javed slaughtering an animal on Eid, triggering rumours that he had killed a cow.

In a video of the incident on 19 June, a 400-500-strong Hindu mob was seen looting Qureshi’s garments shop in the Chotta Chowk market in Nahan in front of the police while chanting “Jai Shri Ram, Jai Shri Ram” and “Shoot the traitors.”

Savej moved to Nahan in 2009 from Jalalabad, his village in UP’s Shamli district, to work in a garment shop run by his relative. He later took over the garment shop.

Javed, 30, a father of three children who ran a garment shop in Hamirpur, moved to Nahan six months ago and opened a jeans shop.

Savej, a father of two children, said clothes worth five to six lakh rupees were looted from both shops.

Savej loaded the remaining items and brought them back to his village in Shamli with a heavy heart.

The Congress Party returned to power in Himachal Pradesh in December 2022. For the past 30 years, the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party have governed the state alternatively. The Hindutva organisation, Hindu Jagran Manch, is active in the state. On 17 June, they posted a video in which vigilantes seized two trucks in Mandi in central Himachal Pradesh, alleging cows were smuggled in them.




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