Six Years On, North East Delhi Lives With What Did Not End

North East Delhi does not look like a site of violence anymore. On a winter afternoon in late February, scooters edge past vegetable carts, welding sparks flash briefly in market lanes, and children in school uniforms cut through alleys that once lay deserted under curfew. Six years ago, these streets carried smoke thick enough to sting the eyes. Today, they carry routine.

But routine here sits on altered foundations.

In one narrow lane, a small shop beneath a modest house sells children’s toys and stationery. Residents remember that it once belonged to Mohammad Wakeel Mansoori. During the February 2020 violence, Wakeel was attacked with acid and lost his eyesight. From his hospital bed that year, he had told reporters, “They have taken my eyes.” The sentence travelled widely, one among many testimonies that briefly pulled the country’s attention toward these neighbourhoods.

Wakeel later reopened the shop. He memorised the shelves. Neighbours say he insisted on working. In December 2025, he fell from the terrace of his house and died of his injuries. His name no longer circulates in national headlines. In this lane, it does.

“He survived 2020,” a neighbour says. “But surviving is not the same as being restored.”

The walls around them show layers of repair. New plaster sits over old brick. Railings do not match original designs. Compensation covered certain categories of damage, residents say, but livelihoods operate on longer timelines than reconstruction grants.

A trader nearby phrases it bluntly. “They count property. They don’t count time.”

In another part of the district, a tailoring unit runs on reduced capacity. The owner lost his previous workshop during the violence. At the time, one resident from the area had told reporters, “They burned everything. We ran with just the clothes we were wearing.” The memory persists, even when the words are no longer repeated in public.

The tailor now works alone. Before 2020, he employed three men. “Restart means smaller,” he says. His case remains pending. Court appearances punctuate his working week. “Six years,” he adds quietly. “Still going.”

Across several households, court files are stacked alongside electricity bills and school certificates. Some families are complainants. Others are witnesses. Some have members facing charges. The phrase “larger conspiracy” entered legal vocabulary in the aftermath of the violence and continues to shape prosecutions. In certain instances, courts have questioned aspects of investigations and evidence. Human rights groups have flagged concerns about delays and prolonged detention under stringent laws. One accused individual had remarked after securing bail that “the process itself becomes punishment.” In these neighbourhoods, the line resonates not as rhetoric but as lived chronology.

Psychological residue is harder to quantify but frequently described. A woman outside a pharmacy says she still wakes quickly at loud noises. “For months after 2020, we didn’t sleep properly,” she says. “Even now, if there is shouting, you remember.”

Yet alongside loss, residents recount moments that disrupted the cycle of violence. An elderly shopkeeper describes how local men stood guard near a place of worship when rumours spread of approaching mobs. Others recall neighbours offering temporary shelter across religious lines. Such episodes were documented sporadically in media coverage at the time. They are remembered locally without embellishment. “These things happened also,” a schoolteacher says. “But they are not the main story people tell.”

Commerce has resumed. Transactions cross communal lines daily. But several residents acknowledge that relationships have changed texture. Invitations are fewer. Conversations more measured. “Business is necessary,” one trader says. “Trust takes longer.”

On 23 February 2026, while these neighbourhoods moved through an ordinary afternoon, a gathering in central Delhi marked six years since the violence. At the Press Club of India, survivors, lawyers, former judges, political leaders and journalists assembled under the title “Lest We Forget.” The atmosphere there was restrained, almost procedural. It was not a rally. It resembled a review.

Brinda Karat speaking at an event marking six years of violence.

The programme opened with a musical invocation emphasising religious harmony, followed by short documentary films revisiting individual testimonies. One film returned to the life of Mohammad Wakeel Mansoori, situating his story within the broader narrative of survival and precarity.

Another examined prolonged pre-trial detention in riot-related cases, detailing how delays in framing charges and successive supplementary chargesheets have stretched proceedings across years. The language used by speakers was careful and institutional.

Former Supreme Court judge Madan B Lokur spoke at length about investigative integrity. He referred to instances where courts had criticised aspects of police investigations, including the reliability of witnesses and procedural lapses. Without adopting overtly political language, he emphasised that justice must not be selective and that constitutional morality requires institutions to function without fear or favour. His intervention framed the issue as one of institutional accountability.

Former Rajya Sabha member Brinda Karat raised the absence of a formal commission of inquiry into the violence, noting that previous episodes of communal conflict had prompted such mechanisms. She questioned the unevenness of accountability, particularly in relation to hate speech allegations. Her remarks placed the events of February 2020 within the charged political climate that followed the Citizenship Amendment Act protests.

Senior advocate and former Union Minister Salman Khurshid shifted the focus from legal mechanics to political outreach. He asked whether remembrance gatherings were reaching beyond circles already committed to the cause. He invoked Mahatma Gandhi’s method of engagement with adversaries and suggested that democratic repair required widening conversation rather than deepening echo chambers.

Rajya Sabha member Manoj Jha echoed concerns about delayed justice, cautioning against allowing accountability to recede indefinitely. Senior journalist John Dayal reflected on changing public perceptions of judicial institutions, suggesting that restoring confidence in the courts was central to democratic health.

The discussions were layered and sober. They revisited investigative conduct, compensation disputes, prolonged incarceration, and the broader political atmosphere of 2020, including the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act and inflammatory rhetoric that had entered public discourse at the time.

When told about the commemoration, residents in North East Delhi respond without hostility but also without visible investment. “It is good they speak,” one man says. “But our cases are still there.”

Six years is enough time for paint to dry and markets to reopen. It is enough time for children to become teenagers. It is not always enough for trials to conclude or for trust to reset fully.

February passes through these lanes without public ceremony. No plaques mark the houses that burned. No official memorial interrupts the traffic.

The violence of 2020 no longer dominates headlines. It has settled instead into the background systems of life here, into legal files, into recalculated budgets, into quieter social exchanges.

The fires have long been extinguished.

What remains is procedural, economic and psychological. Slower than flames, and harder to see.