Remembering the 2020 Delhi Communal Pogrom with Five Films
Six years have passed since a predominantly working-class district in the national capital of Delhi was bloodied and singed by four days of communal violence.
As Delhi bled and burned from February 23 to 26, 2020, government agencies did almost nothing to prevent and quell the violence, rescue those who were threatened by marauding mobs, establish decent and safe relief camps, ensure timely and adequate reparations, secure justice to the victims, hold police officials who failed in their duties and instead encouraged the mobs and join in the targeted violence, and bring the estranged families together.
Why do we regard it to be a public duty to remember, six years after those tragic days? Some may say that this only scrapes old wounds, and so we should move on and forget. However, I am convinced that we have the right to “move on” and forget only when the victim survivors of the targeted hate violence are able to move on.
A young man who spent several months in hospital recovering after a series of operations from bullet injuries said, “The wounds on my body have healed. The wounds on my soul have not”.
How can the wounds on the souls of the residents of north-east Delhi heal when even six years later, almost none of those who wreaked hate violence have been punished for their crimes?
When instead, the Delhi Police has closed the large majority of cases?
When in the overwhelming proportion of cases that have gone to trial, the accused men are acquitted and the courts have decried the fake witnesses and shoddy investigation?
When only one person so far has been convicted for murder?
When it took nearly six years for the police to even identify the policemen who tortured and taunted on video a group of Muslim men, forcing them to sing the national anthem, resulting in the death of one of the men?
When 18 people who participated in the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, continue to be charged with terror crimes, and seven of them are still in prison without bail?
When most of those who have lost their homes and livelihoods to the murderous mobs of six years ago have still not been paid compensation to assist them to rebuild their lives?
Amid these profound and disgraceful betrayals of the victim survivors by the state, we are convinced that it is our high public duty to remember, in grief, in remorse, in atonement, and in rage.
Toward this, the Karwan-e-Mohabbat team worked on a series of these five films, in solidarity with the survivors of the Delhi 2020 communal pogrom.
The Life and Death of Wakeel Mansoori
This short film is a tribute to the memory of Mohammad Wakeel Mansoori, a petty shopkeeper in Shiv Vihar where he had lived among his Hindu neighbours for 30 years. Someone threw acid into his eyes during the 2020 communal rioting. No medical intervention could save his eyes. He still struggled to feed his family by selling children’s toys and clothes in a makeshift store under his small tenement. Through all of this, he never allowed bitterness, hate and despair to enter his soul. In December 2025, because he could not see, he fell from his first-floor home and lost his life.
Camera and edit: Sandeep Yadav and Shivangi Iyer
Supported by the Karwan-e-Mohabbat team
Suffering and Loss: The Delhi 2020 Pogrom
This film brings together the testimonies and stories of survivors who narrate their accounts of years of trauma, displacement, and resilience in front of failed institutional support. It documents the fragile solidarities forged in hospital wards by four survivors of gun violence, whose shared scars became the basis of enduring friendship. Their stories speak not only of anguish, but of perseverance amid continued institutional apathy.
Camera: Sandeep Yadav, Imaad Ul Hasan, Anam Sheikh and Damini Kaushik
Edit: Vedant
Supported by the Karwan-e-Mohabbat team
The Absent State – Failures of Compensation
This film examines the question of compensation for survivors of the communal violence – or rather its unconscionable absence. Six years after the riots, survivors, many from working-class Muslim communities, continue to struggle without any significant relief support from the state government. The film portrays lives transformed from modest stability to daily precarity, and the erosion of faith in institutions tasked with redress. It raises uncomfortable questions about state responsibility and the moral urgency of restitution.
Concept: Harsh Mander
Direction and edit: Hefzul Bahar
Additional camera: Imaad Ul Hasan and Sandeep Yadav
Supported by the Karwan-e-Mohabbat team
Bars of Injustice
This film on the 18 political prisoners who were charged with a conspiracy to organise the 2020 communal violence. In the film we see each of their faces, and hear their voices, their commitment to justice, to the constitution and to peaceful struggle. It brings attention to prolonged pre-trial detentions, the invocation of stringent laws including UAPA, and the far-reaching implications of “larger conspiracy” charges. Through the personal images of the 18 incarcerated women and men, and Amir Azeez’s poem Sab Yaad Rakha Jayega, it lays bare the human cost of delayed trials and indefinite uncertainty.
Concept: Harsh Mander
Edit: Vedant
Supported by the Karwan-e-Mohabbat team
How Hindus and Muslims Saved Lives and Shrines During the Delhi Violence
This film presents heartwarming testimonies of 10 individuals who recount how lives and places of worship were protected during the 2020 violence by people belonging to other faiths. Through these accounts, the film documents these acts of moral courage that defied the logic of communal division – neighbours sheltering neighbours, strangers intervening to prevent bloodshed, and shrines safeguarded from desecration. In the shadow of violence and polarisation, these stories stand as quiet yet powerful affirmations that the ethical foundations of coexistence endure even when state institutions falter and fail the people of this land.
Direction, Camera and Edit: Imaad Ul Hasan
Additional Camera: Sandeep Yadav
Supported by Dilshad, Tarannum and the Karwan-e-Mohabbat team
Harsh Mander is a social worker and writer.
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