Delhi violence: How a mob used rope to climb down a building and wreck a school
Attackers who laid waste to a Shiv Vihar school are said to have climbed down into the premises from a nearby building using rope. Here is a ground report from the campus.
Last UpdatedMar 1, 2020 14:10 IST 
Published byOn a blackboard in Shiv Vihar's DRP Convent School, the lines of chalk have barely faded: rows of alphabet, columns of numbers and, in the top left corner, what appears to be a date. A lesson frozen in time.
But this is no longer a place for children, at least not for now.
The blackboard is missing several chunks. The furniture is gone. Outside, chairs and desks lie in a heap in the middle of a scorched courtyard. A single notebook lies forlornly on a windowsill.
Shiv Vihar is in northeast Delhi, where 42 people have been killed in a conflagration of communal violence that the city police has been accused of failing to contain during an important state visit by a foreign leader -- the President of the United States.
"They came down from there," says an elderly gentleman at the DRP Convent School, pointing to two lines of rope running down the side of a nearby building.
The attackers left behind a scene of desolation and ruin. They uprooted a generator and set it ablaze. They pulled out furniture from all the classrooms and threw them into the courtyard before burning them, according to the school's administrative head, Dharmesh Sharma. And they stole, too.
They took electronic equipment, including laptops, Sharma told India Today TV.
Across the affected areas in northeastern Delhi, similar scenes abound: charred vehicles, torched shops and streets strewn with debris.
Fingers are being pointed at Kapil Mishra, a BJP leader, who told the Delhi Police in an ultimatum issued this weekend that he and others would be forced to hit the streets if they didn't remove demonstrators opposing the amended citizenship law. But Mishra thinks his remarks cannot be considered incitement.
The Delhi High Court has given the police and central government four weeks to reply to a petition asking that FIRs be filed against Mishra, who was formerly a member of Delhi's ruling Aam Aadmi Party, and other BJP leaders. The transfer of a judge who was hearing the case a day earlier became a major point of controversy: while the Congress said it was an attempt by the BJP to protect its partymen, the government said the move was routine.
Also in the dock is Tahir Hussain, an AAP councillor who has been booked for the murder of one of the victims, an IB staffer. His party has suspended him.
