How hate drove a Muslim flower-seller to death in a Maharashtra village

It was a warm summer morning in May in the quiet border village of Banda, nestled in Maharashtra’s Sawantwadi taluka of Sindhudurg district, near the Goa border. At a small flower stall in the bustling Bazaar Peth market, 38-year-old Aftab Shaikh and his mother, Fahmida, were arranging garlands and flowers for the day’s temple visitors. 

Aftab had diabetes and hypertension. As he sat beside his mother, a local maulana passed by. Fahmida called out and asked the maulana for “dua ka paani” – an Islamic ritual where one prays over water for healing and blessings. 

According to Aftab’s family, the maulana agreed. He procured a Rs 10 bottle of water, recited versions from the Quran, and performed the blessing – praying over the water, blowing on it, and then passing it to Aftab, who drank from the bottle.

Aftab’s family described it to Newslaundry as a simple blessing. However, a local Hindutva group accused the maulana of “spitting” into the water, and accused Aftab of then pouring this supposedly tainted water over the flowers that would be purchased by innocent temple-goers.

By the end of that day, a mob gathered. Aftab and his family were threatened and their shop shut down. Over the next few months, the police and local administration refused to intervene to help them reopen the shop.

On October 28, Aftab recorded a video detailing everything he’d gone through. He died by suicide, and the family had to struggle to get an FIR registered. 

“My son was a kind, simple man,” Aftab’s mother told Newslaundry. “I still can’t understand why anyone would hate him so much.”

Newslaundry spoke to Aftab’s family to piece together what happened. The Hindu Manch, the local police, and the local administration refused to speak to Newslaundry for this story; we’ve sent them detailed questionnaires for comment.

What happened that day?

Aftab lived with his family of 10 – his parents, his wife and two children, his brother Abdul Razak, and Abdul’s wife and two children – in a single house in Banda. The family depends on income from the flower stall to survive. Abdul Razzak told Newslaundry that the family has been selling flowers and garlands in Banda for “over 50-60 years”. 

“Templegoers have always bought flowers from us. We also sell toys at nearly 35 temple fairs every year in Maharashtra and Goa, in areas close to our district,” he said. “For the last 17 years, we have been running this flower shop in Bazaar Peth. We have always ensured that our garlands are clean and fresh because people use them for worship. We would never allow anything impure to touch them.”

On May 7, when the first interaction between Aftab and the Hindu Manch took place, Aftab’s mother was present. She said that when the maulana passed the bottle of blessed water to Aftab, two men nearby were watching. 

Abdul said they were members of the Hindu Manch, a local right-wing group. Then men walked over and demanded to know what was going on. Though Aftab said it was a blessing for his ailments, the men insisted the maulana had “spat” into the water and that Aftab intended to pour it on the flowers for sale.

The men then left. Hours later, after the maulana had departed, a group of about 20 members of the Hindu Manch arrived at the shop. Abdul alleged they were accompanied by a “few members” from the local gram panchayat and Banda police station. 

“A nearby shopkeeper called to tell me that a crowd had gathered and was threatening my brother. I rushed there and tried to explain that the maulana had only blown over the water, not spat into it, and that Aftab had simply drunk it,” Abdul told Newslaundry. “Both my brother and I pleaded with them to listen, but they refused. They kept saying that whether he spat or blew, the water was tainted and had been poured on flowers, and that they wouldn’t let us run the shop again.”

When the brothers asked for proof of the allegations, the mob had none. 

“They threatened to demolish our shop if we tried to reopen. They then forced us to remove the garlands and shut down the stall,” Abdul said. “A panchayat member told us that they would hold a meeting to decide our fate, and until then, we couldn’t reopen. Since that day, our shop has remained closed, and our only source of income is gone.”

A nearby shopkeeper told Newslaundry that she had witnessed the Hindu Manch “coming in large numbers” to Aftab’s shop that day. 

“They were hurling abuses and threatening him to shut the shop…But they were not to listen to him and forced them to shut down the shop,” the shopkeeper said on condition of anonymity. “They were very arrogant. Since then Aftab, Abdul or their mother – no one was able to open the shop. I have known them for more than a decade. They are decent people.”

Aftab’s family said they tried to approach their village’s Tanta Mukti committee asking for an intervention but nothing happened. On June 3, the family submitted an application to the gram panchayat to reopen the shop but never got a response.

On June 4, they approached Banda police station and filed a complaint stating they’d been subject to harassment and requesting the police’s help in reopening their shop. The application was accepted but no further action took place.

“Finally, I called a relative in Mumbai who’s a police officer. He spoke to one of his batchmates recently posted in Banda. Only after his intervention did the police arrange a meeting,” Abdul said. 

This meeting took place in the Banda police station and was attended by “around 15-20 members of the Hindu Manch”, Abdul said. 

“We begged them to let us reopen the shop, but they refused. They said they wouldn’t just lock our flower shop forever; they wouldn’t let us run any kind of business in Banda,” he said. “They told us they would only allow our mother to sell coconuts on the roadside. When my mother explained that selling coconuts like that wouldn’t even earn a rupee or two per piece, they told us to leave Banda and do business elsewhere. The meeting ended without any resolution. We went home with nothing but despair.”

But what did the police say?

Abdul alleged the police told his family to “just listen” to what the Hindu Manch had to say and not “argue”. There were no steps towards a resolution.

Loss of livelihood

The stall remained shut. Festivals passed and the family earned nothing, even during Ganesh Chaturthi which is typically a high sales period. 

Abdul said, “We haven’t even been able to pay our children’s school fees. My father suffers from kidney disease and needs dialysis every month, which costs nearly Rs 20,000. My brother was diabetic and needed his medicines too.”

In September, Abdul tried selling flowers at nearby Shiroda village but said he barely made Rs 1,650. “How can a family of 10 survive on that? Living on borrowed money and begging for help to survive had started crushing our family mentally and morally.”

Towards the end of October, the family learned that a temple fair would be held nearby on November 2, marking the start of the jatra season from November to January, during which about 35 fairs take place in the area. They hoped to sell toys at the fairs instead of flowers. 

To that end, on October 28, Aftab told his family he had taken out a loan for Rs 2 lakh and that he’d go to Belagavi the next day to purchase toys for sale. He told his children to stay home from school and come along with him. That night, Abdul said, Aftab went to pick up the funds he’d obtained through the loan. On his way back, he “ran into a few members of the Hindu Manch”. 

“They warned him against putting up the stall and said that if he dared to do so, they would burn it down. That threat was the final blow,” Abdul said.

Aftab’s mother Fahmida told Newslaundry her son was in despair that night.

“He came home, sat beside me, and started crying. He said those men from the Hindu Manch had threatened him again,” she said. “I tried to console him and told him not to worry, that I would go with him to the jatra and face whatever came our way. But our whole family had been living under harassment and humiliation for months. My son had lost all hope. Those men used to say that we should be sent to Pakistan.”

At about 4 am, Aftab recorded a video on his phone detailing the events of the past few months. He said the Hindu Manch was not letting him earn a living, that his family was suffering, and that he had decided to kill himself. 

A local social worker named Sarfraz Naik arrived at the spot, having been summoned by relatives and neighbours. He told Newslaundry: “Aftab first tried to end his life by taking a heavy dose of insulin. But when that didn’t work, he hanged himself from the ceiling fan. Some of his family members heard noises from his room and rushed there. His brother looked through the window and saw him. He immediately broke open the door and brought him down.”

The family called neighbours for help and took Aftab to a local doctor’s home in Deulwadi. 

“Aftab was struggling to breathe, so the doctor advised them to take him to the hospital immediately,” Naik said. “They first took him to Banda Civil Hospital, but the doctors there referred him to the Sawantwadi Civil Hospital because his condition was deteriorating. At Sawantwadi, the doctors suggested shifting him to Bambolim in Goa for better treatment. But as they shifted him into the ambulance, he began vomiting and died before they could even start the journey.”

Hours later, Abdul said, the police arrived at the hospital and took down his statement on Aftab’s death.

“At that point, no one knew about the video Aftab had recorded before taking his life,” Naik said. “Around 12.30 pm, his young son, while scrolling through his father’s phone, found the video and showed it to Abdul. That’s when the family realised Aftab had left behind a suicide video naming the people responsible for his harassment.”

The family then went to the police station, showed officers the video, and asked that an FIR be registered against the members of the Hindu Manch named in it. The police allegedly refused. By about 2 am on October 30, a group of relatives and local residents gathered outside the police station; the family said they would not perform Aftab’s last rites until the police registered an FIR. 

Meanwhile, a group of police officers – it’s unclear who – visited the hospital where Aftab’s body was kept and also Banda police stations. Aftab’s relatives were told that the police was “investigating”  what had happened. The body remained in the hospital for five days while Aftab’s relatives approached lawyers and the offices of the District Collector and the Superintendent of Police, asking that an FIR be registered.

“The police just weren’t ready to file the FIR. We even submitted an online complaint through the citizen portal and personally met the Superintendent of Police and the District Collector, but no one helped,” Abdul said. 

Newslaundry reached out to Sindhudurg SP Mohan Dahikar and District Collector Tripti Dhodmise for comment. 

On November 1, Abdul filed a petition before the Kolhapur bench of the Bombay High Court. The petition asked the court to order an FIR against members of the Hindu Manch. It named the Banda police and district authorities as respondents. Before the court could respond, the police allegedly telephoned the family late on November 2and summoned them to appear at Banda police station.

In the early hours of November 3, the Banda police finally registered an FIR. It named five members of the Hindu Manch – Nilesh Patekar, Baba Kanekar, Guru Kalyankar, Hemant Dabholkar, and Jay Patekar – and included charges of criminal intimidation and abetment to suicide. Before they could be arrested, all five applied for and secured interim anticipatory bail.

Fahmida is still struggling to make sense of Aftab’s death. 

“If I had even the slightest clue that asking for dua ka paani, a simple act of faith, would bring such disaster, I would never have asked the maulana,” she said. “My son didn’t die by suicide. He was driven to death by the hate, mental torture, and cruelty of those Hindu Manch people. They didn’t just destroy his spirit; they murdered him with their hatred.”

She added, “We have been in this business for decades. We know that people use our flowers in temples for worship, and we have always respected that. We would never do anything to disrespect another faith. But those people from Hindu Manch twisted the story, spread lies, and targeted our family.”

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