Mohammad Bilal was on his way to his clothing shop in Sambhal, a small city in Uttar Pradesh, when violence erupted near the city’s centuries-old Shahi Jama Masjid. He called his brother to tell him he had been shot.
That day – 24 November last year – was the last time his older brother, Mohammad Salman, 24, heard from him. “My brother told me, ‘I was coming home when people started pelting stones. The police were firing blindly at the crowd. They shot me, too,’” Salman tells The Independent in an interview in Sambhal.
