Rabia Khatun, in her late sixties, was preparing for namaz in her Shibpur home in Howrah on Thursday evening when she came across five terrified faces — four men and a boy in his teens — shivering in fear.

Caught in the violence that was playing out on the main road — GT Road — the five had somehow scampered up a flight of steps to thefirst floor of a five-storied building, adjacent to the Shibpur police station, for shelter and did not know whom to approach.

None of them knew each other. But all of them knew they were Hindus and they were running away to save themselves from a conflict that sucked into its vortex people from two communities.

When Rabia spotted the group, the teen was crying inconsolably and others were trembling.

She recalled that when the unknown five approached her for shelter, chants of “Jai Shri Ram” rent the air outside amid the noise of glass panes of cars being shattered.

Groups were clashing with each other on the occasion of Ram Navami in Howrah, she added, recounting the scene barely 50 feet from her home.

“I had cleaned my apartment and stepped down to throw garbage when I spotted this group. Crying, the little boy pleaded with me for a safe shelter,” Rabia said.

“I told them, ‘Don’t worry, all of you follow me. You will be safe and no one will touch you’.”

The rescued group

The mother of four escorted the group to her fourth-floor apartment — measuring around 600 square feet — in a building that has two other Muslim families on different floors and shares the compound with a Shiva temple, facing GT Road. It was around 5pm on Thursday and the family had prepared its menu of fruits and dates to break the fast.

Plates had been laid on the floor when the five strangers entered the drawing room and settled down.

“There was a civic volunteer in plainclothes, who said his work was to gather intelligence. He spoke Bengali while the rest conversed in Hindi. One of them hesitated, spotting Arabic scriptures framed on our wall,” said Prem Khan, Rabia’s eldest son. Rabia said she allayed his fears.

“I told all of them, ‘It is our duty as a Muslim family to stand beside you. Musibaat mein help karna hamara faarz hain (It’s our duty to help people in distress)’.”

As the evening wore on and the group settled down, Zeenat Parveen, Prem’s wife, served them water and fruits.

Zeenat hails from Santragachi in Howrah and married Prem nine years ago after converting from Hinduism to Islam.

The scene of amity inside Rabia’s apartment contrasted sharply with what was unfolding across several pockets of Shibpur after violence erupted on the evening of Ram Navami following a clash between two groups.

The windshields of several cars, autorickshaws and police vehicles were damaged, carts selling fruits were torched, and asbestos sheets and glass panes shattered.

The ruling Trinamul Congress blamed the BJP while the BJP alleged that the “appeasement politics” of chief minister Mamata Banerjee and police inefficiency were responsible for the clashes.

At Rabia’s home, soft drinks were served and gradually the group started opening up, Prem said.

Someone said he was from an area close to the Aloka cinema, another was from Ghosh Bagan, all within a few kilometres of the site of violence, he added.

The teen said he was from Mullick Fatak and wanted to speak to his mother on his mobile phone.

“After he spoke to his mother, the child’s mom wanted to speak to me. She thanked me profusely for saving her child. I told her not to worry: ‘Your son is safe with us. He is like my child’,” Rabia said.

Almost four hours later, when the road outside had cleared and police had begun patrolling, the group stepped out and left.

“I told Pappu, one of my sons who drives an electric rickshaw, to drop the boy at his house. The police hit him with a baton for ferrying someone at night. I later told him, ‘Never mind’,” Rabia said.

Almost 36 hours after the violence had erupted, people in the neighbourhood were trying to get on with their lives when this correspondent visited the area on Saturday afternoon.

Shops and stalls had opened under the watchful eyes of the police who remained deployed along GT Road and areas adjoining it.

Saffron flags fluttered as Muslims prepared for their afternoon prayer, but no one was talking about the mayhem of Thursday evening.

Groups of men, old and young, were discussing how Hindus and Muslims shared space peacefully in this part of Howrah.

Several of Prem’s friends — both Muslim and Hindu — said they never allowed their faith to divide them.

“So many things have changed in the past few years.... Since 2019, we have been seeing these armed Ram Navami processions, with people who are not from the area. We couldn’t recognise most of the faces who were in the procession that afternoon. Mostly outsiders were chanting the war cry, ‘Jai Shri Ram’,” said Mohammad Salauddin, a friend of Prem.

It had never been like this before, all the youths agreed. They added that they had to work hard to make ends meet and were uninterested in politics.