By Tarushi Aswani
New Delhi: “It has been almost a month since my sister killed herself,” Rifat Jahan said, sitting in her home in Ahmedabad’s Gomtipur.
On August 9, Rifat’s 15-year-old sister Saniya Ansari ended her own life, leaving behind a suicide note, a devastated family and questions about the Disturbed Areas Act.
The Ansari family’s purchase of a house in their own neighbourhood led to months of harassment, violence and intimidation under the shadow of Gujarat’s Disturbed Areas Act. The conflict between the Muslim buyers and the Hindu sellers ended in tragedy last month, when their teenage daughter died by suicide, naming the sellers in a note.
But what complicates this is a 40-year-old law and repeated inaction by the local police, the family claimed.
Documents and the Disturbed Areas Act
For nearly a year, the family said, their lives were upended after they bought a house from a Hindu neighbour for Rs 15.5 lakh. They had cleared the payment by December 2024, but before the formal handover could take place, the Hindu seller’s husband died. When the mourning period ended, the seller’s son moved back into the house, triggering a dispute that grew steadily uglier. This house, situated in front of the home where the Ansaris currently live, became a point of pain, contention and uninvited hate from local Hindutva groups.
From this point onwards, whenever the Ansaris would ask the seller Suman Sonavde about the handover of the house to them, since now they were the rightful owners, Sonavde would come up with excuses – even after receiving the full payment for the house. Sonavde’s son Dinesh began threatening the family and said he would nullify the deal, citing the Disturbed Areas Act, the Ansaris claimed.
“They dragged Saniya by her hair, beat her, kicked us. She killed herself waiting for someone to save us, help us,” alleged Rifat, describing the August 7 assault in which a group of local right-wing men allegedly led by the seller’s son barged into their home. Two days later, Saniya left a note naming four individuals. The note accused them of taking her family’s money without giving them the house, and of tormenting them for months.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.