Displaced villagers living at a relief camp in Shamli after the Muzaffarnagar riots
Zubaida lives with her family of seven in a tent, chases after tractors for food, and scavenges piles of used clothes for anything to wear.
She has never struggled so hard just to survive, but the camp where hundreds like her have taken shelter, is still safer than home. She saw her neighbours hacked to death when communal clashes broke out in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh two weeks ago.
"I shake with fear when I even say the name of my village. How can I ever go back?"
She is the face of a grave humanitarian crisis staring at the Samajwadi Party government led by Akhilesh Yadav, after the riots that left nearly 50 dead and 40,000 people huddling in two dozen relief camps, refugees in their own land. (
Muzaffarnagar riots: politicians to be arrested within 2 days, says police)
At a camp near Malkapur in Shamli where over 5,000 people have gathered, not one family wants to return to their village. They feel safer under the tattered orange and yellow plastic sheets that they now call home.
"We saw people being killed, massacred. They burnt our house. We just picked up our children and ran for our lives," said 60-year-old Mohammad Idris, from village Bavdi. He broke down as he relived the horror that unraveled in the aftermath of the killing of two Jats and one Muslim in village Kawal last month. Incendiary speeches by political leaders and rumours fed the simmering tension until clashes erupted in several villages.
A little away from Idris, a group of children were busy in the moonlight, rummaging through donated clothes dumped like garbage on the roadside.
"I have taken clothes for my ammi (mother), and a frock for myself," said 5-year-old Gulafsha. Her friend Intezar added, "All our clothes, everything was left behind when the fighting started in our village."
It is a similar quest for food every day. People queue up with plates and buckets when tractors bring sacksful of rice.
"I have never chased a tractor carrying food before. I will take food for four people," said Mona, a refugee.