Rashid (name changed) has lived in Paud, a small picturesque village in Pune’s Mulshi taluka, since he was 11 years old, when his family migrated here for work from Uttar Pradesh. Over the last three decades, he grew up, got married here and started his own bakery in Paud. However, he says his life changed on May 2nd this year, when a Muslim boy was found and held for desecrating the Annapurna temple in the village.

“It has been over two months now. They made us shut our bakery and threatened us to leave the village. They call us ‘outsider Muslims’ as opposed to the handful of Muslim families in the village who are referred to as local Muslims, as many more generations of these families have lived here. But it’s not just because we are outsiders, the main reason why we are forced to leave is because we are Muslims,” Rashid said.

On May 2, a Muslim minor boy, who was born in Paud although his family came from Bihar, was caught desecrating the idol of Annapurna Goddess at Nageshwar temple in the village. While the boy has been arrested by the police, a few Hindu right wing organisations organised a bandh along with march. However, the Muslim families that Indie Journal spoke to alleged that following this, several youngsters, in groups of 10-20 people, began targeting Muslim-owned businesses in the village, threatening them to shut down and leave.

#WATCH | #Pune: Sakal Hindu Samaj Holds Massive Protest In Mulshi After Muslim Youth Desecrates Goddess Annapurna Idol At Paud Village Temple

Read: https://t.co/Mxe3QUUlIW#Maharashtra #punenews pic.twitter.com/2iBD2oXFCX

— Free Press Journal (@fpjindia) May 5, 2025

“My family has been living in this village for 60 years. But now, I am deemed an outsider. I step out for any work, to buy vegetables, someone will come to me and say why I haven’t left the village yet when everyone else has left. They have even shut down the village mosque for us. Only the local Muslims are allowed. We have to travel all the way to Pune just for namaz,” Maajid (name changed), one of the few Muslims who have not left Paud yet, said.

Members of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), who recently visited the village on a fact finding mission regarding the same, found out that a group of some local people and ‘outsiders’ have been roaming around quite frequently in some of the villages in the area to threaten people not to allow any Muslim to work or employ him/her in any business or profession or allow them to stay as a tenant in their houses to reside or to do business in the place owned by them.

“We got information that several Muslim people doing business in the area have been made to close their shops / businesses,” the PUCL said in a statement submitted to the Pune District Collector. They found during their visit that bakeries, scrap material shops, hair salons and chicken-mutton sellers were among the shops run by these Muslim owners that were forced to be closed.

“More than hundred employees working in the above said bakeries have become unemployed and are urging the local police to make efforts to reopen the bakeries, but so far no action has been taken. It is pertinent to note here that these employees include Muslim as well as Hindu persons. All have become jobless and are struggling for survival. So also, those working in other petty businesses mentioned above have become jobless and have no other source of income,” the PUCL adds in its statement.

Most of the 350 families that were allegedly targetted have left the village. While some have taken shelter in Pune, some have moved towards Lonavala. But Rashid said that a large number of families had no choice but to go back to their native village in Uttar Pradesh with no guarantee about when they could come back.

“I have lived in Paud for 18 years now. My kids were born here. I worked in one of the bakeries that has been shut down now. I had to cancel the admissions of my three children from the village school as we could not return to the village even after the school began. I have no other source of income and no money to enroll them at a Pune school. My two five-year-olds and one nine-year-old have no option but to sit home now, Sameer (name changed) said.

The Muslims who have been allegedly targeted said that nobody in the village came to their aid as they also feared being ostracised.

“My mother-in-law is from Pune, hers is one of the local Muslim families in the village. However, even they did not come out in our support because they feared that they would get targeted. Despite this, no one in the village has come to her flour mill for the past two months,” Rashid said.

While the Muslim families and business owners were allegedly threatened to leave, they said that other villagers who did not participate in this violence were also pressurised to boycott these Muslim businesses.

“My brother has a milk distribution business, wherein he sold around 1,200-1,300 litres of milk everyday. Following the incident, all his regular customers stopped buying milk from him. One Hindu man, who also has a shop in the village, told him that he had been pressurised and he was afraid that if he did not listen, they would boycott him too,” Rashid said.

"Can a whole community be made to suffer for an offence allegedly committed by a boy belonging to their community?"

Moreover, the Maajid said that the villagers have also boycotted all kinds of Muslim labourers in the village, rendering them without work or income.

“It has been brought to our notice that now for more than one and half month, no Muslim person, particularly casual labourer or those employed in the village is allowed to work; they have no other source of income. Hence, they and their families are facing acute problems of survival AND are facing the problem of making both ends meet. The question is can a whole community living in a village be made to suffer for an offence allegedly committed by a boy belonging to their community?” PUCL questioned in its statement.

While the Muslim families that are still living in the village say that they have not been completely ostracised by the villagers openly, they are facing indirect boycott and are afraid.

“A few days after the incident, my wife went out to buy vegetables. A few people saw her and started asking loudly, why she was still in the village. Many men gathered around her. She was so scared, she stopped going out. We are all very scared for our lives. We don’t step out of our house alone now,” Rashid said.

The communal tensions in the village have been intense since the day the incident of desecration took place. The Gram Panchayat passed a resolution the very next day prohibiting Muslims from outside the village entering the village mosque to offer prayers. The PUCL also observed that some placards/boards, with a notice banning the entry of ‘Muslims not residing in the village’ were displayed in Paud, Pirangut and other surrounding villages. The Muslim villagers alleged that the police or any other government authority have not taken any of these reactions or the boycott seriously.

“We went to the police multiple times to report the boycott. But we were just advised to leave the village for a while until the situation cools down. We went to the District Collector as well, but no one helped us,” Farid (name changed), who has lived in Paud for over 20 years and in Pune for over 40 years said.

The PUCL said that a few of the discriminatory boards, which were put up around two months ago, were removed recently after continuous follow up by the organisation. However, the discrimination and the boycott continues.

“This is a pattern of terror and we fear it is getting replicated in other villages also. We have asked the Superintendent of Police (SP) to take serious cognizance of this issue,” said Milind Champanerkar of the PUCL.