Civil society groups from Delhi were at the forefront in providing succour and support to the riot victims following the Godhra carnage. Ms Mohini Giri and her team from the Guild for Service were some of the first NGOs to rush to ground zero in Godhra in 2002.
“I took up a four-storey house in Godhra so that widows and their children were provided with a proper roof over their heads and they continued to live there for many years. The children received an education and many of them are now working while the widows were taught skills to become economically independent,” Ms Giri said.
“In all, I helped rehabilitate 480 children and even held a mass wedding for the daughters of these victims. A donor from Dubai has built 400 tenements in Godhra for these riot-affected women and they are all now living in their own homes. Seeing the joy and satisfaction on their faces fills me with a tremendous sense of relief. I still shudder when I remember the state of these families huddled in camps post the riots. I walked into the camp to be met by loud wails of the womenfolk who had seen entire families being decimated before their eyes,” Ms Giri recalled.
She recalls how she went to the Imperial Hotel in New Delhi some weeks ago and “one of the waiters came forward and touched my feet and said ‘don’t you remember me. I’m Parvez from Godhra’. We had helped him do a course in hotel management,” Ms Giri said.
Social activist Shabnam Hashmi, founder chairman of Action Now for Harmony and Democracy (Anhad), has worked with the riot victims on a completely different tack.
“We were in the forefront for the repeal of Pota. We also fought to ensure that riot victims receive compensation from the state,” said Ms Hashmi.