On 2024 Sambhal Riots Anniversary, Story Of Alleged Murder, Long-Lost Well

In March 1978 Ramsharan Rastogi, a grocery store owner in Uttar Pradesh's Sambhal, was allegedly murdered and his body dumped in a well directly opposite his shop in Mahmud Khan Sarai, then a busy market area in a town that lived through 72 hours of communal riots.

His body was reportedly tied to a weighing scale and tossed into the well, condemned to its watery depths. It was never found. Media reports from the time said the well was later filled in and covered. Distraught, Rastogi's family filed a police complaint but no action was taken.

Today, 47 years and 244 days later, action was taken; district authorities began excavation of the well, now buried under decades of decayed vegetation and layers of dirt, gravel, and rocks.

Ironically, it is the anniversary of another bout of communal violence — the November 2024 riots — that finally led authorities back to the well. On Monday police, out in force to maintain peace on the first anniversary of the November 2024 riots, were approached by Rastogi's family.

District Magistrate Rajendra Pensiya and Superintendent of Police KK Bishnoi were in the Mahmud Khan market when Sushil Rastogi, Ramsharan's nephew, urged them to act.

And they did, ordering the excavation of a well many didn't even know existed and others had forgotten, even chosen to forget maybe. On Wednesday that excavation began.

There has been no discovery of note yet; no body, no bones, no skeletal remains.

This, though, is actually the story of two days. Of two communal riots.

One was in March 1978. The other was in November 2024.

Last year a court-mandated survey team, told to inspect the local Shahi Jama Masjid amid claims it was built on top of a demolished Hindu temple – a now-familiar narrative – met with violence after rumours they were about to dig up parts of the 16th century, Mughal-era mosque.

The team had legal sanction – although reports indicate it was to survey and not explicitly dig, as in an archaeological sense – but communal distrust fuelled by a statewide backdrop of courts being asked to order surveys of historic mosques, on grounds they were built over temples, rumours of desecration, and alleged provocative chanting led to violence and five deaths.