Over 3,000 poor Muslims have fled a enterprise hub exterior New Delhi this month, fearing for his or her lives after Hindu-Muslim clashes and sporadic assaults focusing on them, residents, police and a neighborhood group mentioned.

Shops and shacks owned or run by Muslims and their homes in two giant slum areas have been padlocked when Reuters visited them greater than per week after seven individuals have been killed in clashes in Nuh and Gurugram districts in Haryana state, adjoining the Indian capital.

The violence started on July 31 after a Hindu non secular procession, organised by teams ideologically aligned with the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was focused and a mosque attacked in retaliation. Police quelled the unrest in 48 hours.

But minor assaults focusing on Muslims have continued for days, scaring households who had moved to the brand new city centre of Gurugram – the place 250 of the Fortune 500 firms have places of work – looking for a livelihood.

Stone-throwing, arson and vandalisation of two small Muslim shrines within the slum districts pressured lots of of Muslim households to desert their single-room homes and search shelter at a prepare station earlier than heading out, witnesses mentioned.

“Many of us spent the entire night on a railway platform because it was much safer there,” Raufullah Javed, a tailor who fled to his house village within the jap state of Bihar, informed Reuters by telephone.

The Gurugram president of Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind (Council of Indian Muslim Theologians) Mufti Mohammed Salim estimated that greater than 3,000 Muslims had left the district after the violence.

Four Muslim shopkeepers who additionally fled to their villages in jap India mentioned by telephone that members of hardline Hindu teams had questioned them about their companies and households.

“Some Hindu men came in a large group and started asking questions such as how much money I earn,” mentioned Shahid Sheikh, a barber who fled from Tigra village, house to over 1,200 Muslim households.

“Many Muslims decided it’s best to leave for a while,” mentioned Sheikh, including that some Hindu house owners of retailers rented out to Muslims needed them to vacate.

Tensions between India’s majority Hindus and minority Muslims have risen over points such because the consuming of beef and inter-faith marriages with Muslims saying they’ve been more and more focused by Hindu activists since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP authorities took energy in 2014.

BJP leaders say clashes between the 2 communities have damaged out previously as properly and have been much less frequent since they got here to energy.

The bother in Gurugram, a metropolis of over 1.5 million individuals previously often called Gurgaon, has uncovered multinationals reminiscent of Google, American Express, Dell, Samsung, Ernst & Young and Deloitte based mostly there to dangers of violence and disruption.

Haryana police mentioned they’d arrested over 200 males from each communities in reference to the violence and a few Muslims who had fled had begun to trickle again.

Anil Vij, the inside minister of Haryana’s BJP authorities, mentioned he had acquired experiences of some Muslims leaving however the state of affairs is totally beneath management now.

“No one is asking them to leave and we are providing full security in all communally sensitive areas,” he informed Reuters. (Reporting by Rupam Jain and Sakshi Dayal; Editing by YP Rajesh and Angus MacSwan)