House of Silkyara hero Wakeel Hasan razed, DDA offers flat

House of Silkyara hero Wakeel Hasan razed, DDA offers flat

NEW DELHI: A day after it had demolished the two-room house of Silkyara tunnel rescue hero Wakeel Hasan as part of an anti-encroachment drive, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) on Thursday offered him an EWS category flat in northwest Delhi’s Narela, temporary shelter to his family and a job for him.

However, Hasan’s wife Shabana demanded a house in the vicinity of Khajoori Khas, northeast Delhi, where the family lived in an allegedly unauthorised structure, as their kids studied in the area.

Hasan, who led a team of rat-hole miners that dug through the blockage to rescue workers trapped in Uttarakhand’s Silkyara tunnel, on Thursday sat amid the family’s household items on a street in front of their demolished home.

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Treated like a criminal, says Uttarakhand hero

I was treated like a criminal. Officials misbehaved with my children, they barged into our house and razed it to the ground,” said Hasan, who was feted as a hero after the tunnel rescue in Uttarkashi district last November.

“We did not think twice before rushing to Uttarakhand for the rescue operation without caring for our lives and did what we could to save lives. My house was demolished in front of me and whatever respect I had earned was shattered with it,” he added.

DDA said in a statement that after the demolition it emerged that the house belonged to Hasan who was involved in the Silkyara-Barkot rescue operation. “DDA officials went on site to meet Wakeel and to convey the offer of a flat in Narela to him. Apart from this, temporary relief in the form of employment to Wakeel was also worked out and conveyed to him. These measures were put into place to provide immediate succor to Wakeel and his family,” a DDA official said in a press conference.

The authority added that an EWS flat at Narela was offered on the instructions of LG V K Saxena, considering the yeoman service rendered by Hasan.

Meanwhile, DDA raised a five-feet high brick wall around the demolished structure to prevent its misuse.

The narrow and dirty lanes of E-block, Rajiv Nagar, in Khajoori Khas area saw a sudden influx of mediapersons and curious passers by on Thursday.

“My daughter missed her board exam today because of all this tension. She was taken to the police station along with my other children, where they were detained. Who will pay for this loss? Just two months ago (November), I was there to help the nation in whatever capacity I could… I never thought I would be targeted like this,” Hasan said.

Aliza, the oldest of the children, said that she missed her board exam on Thursday because of the demolition and her books were missing too.

Hasan claimed that after his return from the Uttarakhand rescue mission, he was felicitated by North East MP Manoj Tiwari, who allegedly assured him that he would try to sort out issues regarding the house.

“But all of those verbal assurances have failed and nothing was sorted out. I am still paying for the amount I raised for the house. It has been just two months and they have forgotten about me. I told the DDA officials who came to demolish my house, that ‘my name is Wakeel Hasan and I helped in the rescue of workers in Uttarakhand’. But it seems, they only heard my name and not my work,” said Hasan.

TOI found Hasan’s wife Shabana sitting away from the crowd, near the broken house with her daughter Aliza. “The roof over our head has been taken away, we just want our home which we have made since 2013. My children are all studying nearby. While DDA officials have promised they will provide us a home but we want to be in the vicinity and we want it in writing. We do not want anything more or less, just what we had before the demolition,” she said.

In an earlier statement, DDA said that in 2016, while initiating a demolition drive, the agency had reclaimed its three land parcels from encroachment, from Khasra no ‘247/1 MIN’ in village Khajoori Khas. During inspections in 2017, it was found that individuals named Wakeel and Goyal were again encroaching on two of the three plots. This serious violation was promptly reported to the police, triggering a scheduled demolition program set for June 2018. However, the execution of the demolition faced significant challenges. Demolitions were again scheduled in Sept and Dec 2022.

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