In the early hours of December 13, 2022, when Rahul Langri, a 42-year-old moneylender in Madhya Pradesh, was in jail in connection with an alleged case of abetment to suicide, bulldozers arrived at two houses his family members lived in, and broke down about 20 feet of their front portions. The properties were owned by Langri’s mother, Vimla Gurjar, 65, and wife, Radha, 38. The Ujjain Municipal Corporation (UMC) said they had been built without government clearance.
“They had served notices to my family on the night of December 12, and arrived just a few hours later. My mother, wife, and three children kept crying in front of the officials, but nobody listened to them,” says Langri, adding that the authorities came with several police personnel, forcing the neighbours into silence.
Bulldozers have been the symbol of hasty ‘justice’ in several BJP-ruled States in north India, with the administration and security forces swooping down to demolish a person’s home, days or sometimes hours after they are accused of a crime. The wrath of the bulldozer in M.P. has been largely faced by the socially and economically vulnerable. In August 2022, news website Newslaundry had published a report saying that 332 properties had been demolished in the State since March 2020, of which 223 belonged to Muslims; 92 in April 2022 alone, after Ram Navami.
