Ahmedabad: Attacked after family's purchase of house in ‘Disturbed Area', teen ends life; seller, her son among six booked

Indian Express

2 days ago

'Saniya wanted to join the police force and help people like us who had nowhere to go. Now what do I do with this general knowledge book she brought from school?'
Rifatjahan Khusru, 27, wells up as she remembers Saniya Ansari, her youngest sibling, who died by suicide on Saturday – two days after she and her other two siblings along with their mother were allegedly assaulted in a brutal manner outside their rented home by a group of people led by a neighbour whose ancestral house the Ansari family had purchased in October 2024.
Saniya left behind a note naming people she held responsible for her death.
Following intervention by Ahmedabad Commissioner of Police GS Malik, an FIR on charges of abetment to suicide was filed early on Thursday, four days after Saniya's death.
Rifatjahan said the family had been living in Gomtipur for the last 16 years. Last year, they purchased the house of a neighbour for Rs 15.50 lakh. However, right before the house was to be handed over to their family, the husband of the seller died on December 22, 2024. She then requested that the handover be delayed for the 40-day mourning period.
The harassment, claimed Rifatjahan, began in January this year after the seller handed over the keys of the house to her mother Shahjahan and went away to live with her eldest son. However, the first floor of this house was occupied by another son of hers who refused to leave the house, stating that there was a property dispute between him and his mother, said Rifatjahan.
'On August 7 night, around 10 people started hitting my mother, sister and brother while they were in the ground floor of the new house. They dragged my sister by her hair and kept beating her, kicking her so badly that she was covered in bruises,' she added.
An FIR was filed against four of the accused, said Gomtipur Inspector DV Rana although the Ansari family claimed they were yet to receive a copy of this FIR.
Saniya was buried at Chartoda Kabrastan on Sunday.
Saniya's family claimed they were threatened with legal consequences under the Disturbed Areas Act by the accused for trying to purchase the house of a member of another community.
In her suicide note, Saniya had named four people, stating that they had taken her family's money but didn't give possession of the house, which caused 10 months of misery. It further stated that nobody had taken action against the perpetrators.
Gomtipur Police filed an Accidental Death report and sent the body for post mortem. The family alleged that in spite of them approaching the police with CCTV footage of Saniya's assault and suicide note, no FIR was filed.
On Monday, the family met Commissioner Malik who intervened in the matter. The FIR was filed at 12.15 am on Thursday. Six people, including the seller and her son in question, was booked under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) sections 107 (abetment of suicide of a child) and 54 (liability of an abettor).
On the delay in filing the FIR, Inspector Rana told The Indian Express, 'The suicide note was given to the police on the next day (of the suicide). We thought it may be fake because it had Hindi words written in English. So, we decided to send it to the FSL (forensic science laboratory) and await the results…'
When asked about the assault on Saniya and her siblings, Inspector Rana said, 'We filed a separate FIR in that case… We booked four persons and arrested them as well.'
On why the family did not approach the police earlier, Rifatjahan said one of the accused had threatened them with action under the Disturbed Areas Act.
Rana said, 'Currently, there appears to be no violation of the Disturbed Areas Act because that would come in at the time of transferring ownership of the property. Further, there are clashing claims as to how much payment has been made towards the sale of the house. So we have to check the property documents.'
When asked about liability under the Act, PI Rana said, 'The property cannot be sold without opinion from the administration. The request would come to me and then go right up to the Special Branch and from there, back to the Collectorate before any such legal sale can take place. However, none of this has happened so far. It appears that half the payment was made but the sale was stuck because the owner's son was not vacating the premises.'
The Indian Express could not reach the seller's son as the part of the house where he resides was locked on Thursday.
The Disturbed Areas Act in Gujarat empowers the administration to declare parts of the territorial jurisdiction as 'disturbed' in the context of communal clashes and prohibits the direct sale of property between people of different faiths unless it's cleared by the collector's office, who has to certify that the transaction involves free consent.