Muslim Teen's Suicide Spotlights Gujarat's Controversial Disturbed Areas Act

New Delhi: “It has been almost a month since my sister killed herself,” Rifat Jahan said, sitting in her home in Ahmedabad’s Gomtipur.

On August 9, Rifat’s 15-year-old sister Saniya Ansari ended her own life, leaving behind a suicide note, a devastated family and questions about the Disturbed Areas Act.

The Ansari family’s purchase of a house in their own neighbourhood led to months of harassment, violence and intimidation under the shadow of Gujarat’s Disturbed Areas Act. The conflict between the Muslim buyers and the Hindu sellers ended in tragedy last month, when their teenage daughter died by suicide, naming the sellers in a note.

But what complicates this is a 40-year-old law and repeated inaction by the local police, the family claimed.

Documents and the Disturbed Areas Act

For nearly a year, the family said, their lives were upended after they bought a house from a Hindu neighbour for Rs 15.5 lakh. They had cleared the payment by December 2024, but before the formal handover could take place, the Hindu seller’s husband died. When the mourning period ended, the seller’s son moved back into the house, triggering a dispute that grew steadily uglier. This house, situated in front of the home where the Ansaris currently live, became a point of pain, contention and uninvited hate from local Hindutva groups.

From this point onwards, whenever the Ansaris would ask the seller Suman Sonavde about the handover of the house to them, since now they were the rightful owners, Sonavde would come up with excuses – even after receiving the full payment for the house. Sonavde’s son Dinesh began threatening the family and said he would nullify the deal, citing the Disturbed Areas Act, the Ansaris claimed.

“They dragged Saniya by her hair, beat her, kicked us. She killed herself waiting for someone to save us, help us,” alleged Rifat, describing the August 7 assault in which a group of local right-wing men allegedly led by the seller’s son barged into their home. Two days later, Saniya left a note naming four individuals. The note accused them of taking her family’s money without giving them the house, and of tormenting them for months.

At the heart of this dispute is the Disturbed Areas Act, a Gujarat law introduced in 1991 to prevent “distress sales” of property in communally sensitive areas. Under the Act, sales across communities require prior approval from the district collector. In practice, critics argue, it has become a tool to restrict Muslim families from moving into Hindu-majority neighbourhoods. In Saniya’s case, neighbours allegedly threatened them with legal action under the Act, implying that their purchase could be invalidated. This, the family said, deterred them from pushing harder for police action and created the space for intimidation to fester.

Kaleem Siddiqui, a social activist who has monitored Saniya’s case, believes that such acts are being deployed to deter Muslims from moving out of ghettos and claiming spaces. Siddiqui told The Wire, “Instead of protecting vulnerable families, the law is weaponised to deny them agency. It tells Muslims: you may have the money, but you cannot choose where to live.”

From pillar to police

Saniya’s family is haunted whenever they step outside their home, as the house of their dreams-turned-nightmares stands waiting.

In the last one month, the family claimed that they had to pressure and persuade the local police to lodge an FIR. Despite CCTV footage of the assault and the suicide note, the family said the police initially refused to file an FIR. Officers described the death as accidental and sought forensic verification of the note. It was only after the intervention of Police Commissioner G.S. Malik that six people’s names were mentioned in the FIR with abetment of suicide of a minor, along with other charges. For Saniya’s family, the delayed action confirmed their worst fears: that the system would not protect them. “We kept going to the police, but they said the law is not on our side. We have been feeling helpless and hopeless,” Rifat said.

The family’s lawyer, advocate Satyesha Leuva, said that the FIR does not mention several facts. “Even getting the police to register an FIR was a struggle for us. Also, when the initial FIR was lodged, it mentioned the suicide, but not the months of harassment that preceded it and not even the reality that the girl was brutally beaten and had wounds all over, from the beating caused by the accused,” Leuva told The Wire.

On this, Gomtipur Inspector D.V. Rana said that the FIR was filed against the accused. “We are waiting for the FSL (forensic science laboratory) results to ascertain whether the note was really written by the girl who hung herself. Once it is proven, we will be taking this investigation further,” Rana told The Wire.

The Wire tried to contact the Hindu sellers' family but was unable to get through. According to the Ansaris, the seller's family is absconding since the police case was filed.

Policing property purchase

“Mere ghar mein inki wajah se 10 mahine se koi khushi nahi, sirf rona dhona aur ladaai (Because of them [the sellers], there has been no joy in my house for the last 10 months, only tears and fighting),” wrote 15-year-old Saniya in her suicide note. She added that no one came to their rescue – not the police, not their neighbours.

The Gomtipur tragedy is not an isolated instance. Over the years, civil rights groups have documented how the Disturbed Areas Act is invoked to freeze Muslim buyers out of mixed localities. In 2019, amendments widened the Act’s ambit, making permissions more cumbersome and its application more discretionary.

The incident underlines two fault lines: the police’s unwillingness to intervene early in cases involving minority families, and the structural bias built into property laws in Gujarat. While the FIRs may now proceed through the courts, the damage to the Ansaris — both emotional and material — is irreparable.

Saniya’s note, brief and anguished, has since been cited in local protests demanding reform of the Disturbed Areas Act. But few expect change. “The law has become a political tool,” said Siddiqui. “As long as it is in place, vulnerable families will always live in fear that their right to a home can be snatched away.”

Prasad Chacko, national secretary of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, believes that the current regime and the outfits it has fostered weaponise law and the process of legislation to terrorise minorities, suppress dissent and incarcerate those who stand up for justice.

“The young girl who was forced into suicide is yet another victim of the Hindutva supremacist elements that terrorised a Muslim family that engaged in a legitimate transaction of buying a house. The Disturbed Areas Act, the intention of which is to prevent 'demographic imbalance' due to distress sales of houses when people migrate to 'safer' locations (ghettos), is now yet another weapon of harassment and intimidation of Muslims,” Chacko told The Wire.

For Gujarat’s Minority Coordination Committee (MCC), the Disturbed Areas Act is being used to restrict Muslims to certain areas and make them systematically marginalized. If communities don’t interact, the non-profit group believes, it’s going to affect the future of society in terms of ideas, mindset and openness. “Since the BJP came into power, they wanted to distance Muslims from Hindu areas. The Disturbed Areas Act has become a big weapon for them. They don’t care about society or the social fabric. The fabric is already tattered. The incident that happened in Ahmedabad is a dark picture of this Act,” Mujahid Nafees, MCC convener, said.

Nafees also emphasised on how this particular law requires approval from authorities for property transfers between religious communities in "disturbed" zones, but in practice, it is used to block Muslims from moving into new neighborhoods, deepening marginalisation and ghettoisation.

The Ansari family still live in their home located in front of the house they wanted to buy. Over the course of 10 months, the Ansari family has lost Rs 15.5 lakh, their dignity, their faith in the law and their daughter Saniya.

If you know someone – friend or family member – at risk of suicide, please reach out to them. The Suicide Prevention India Foundation maintains a list of telephone numbers they can call to speak in confidence. Icall, a counselling service run by TISS, has maintained a crowdsourced list of therapists across the country. You could also take them to the nearest hospital.

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