The hills have eyes that keep a lookout for cops

That day, the hills rang out with the sounds of violence.

- Leena Dhankhar and Karn Pratap Singh

A thin black tar road, framed by the rugged Aravallis on either side, leads to the Nalhar Mahadev temple, 8km from Nuh, Haryana. On July 31, a day now seared into the National Capital Region's (NCR) memory, a procession organised by the right-wing Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal at the temple was at the centre of an attack by Muslim groups. For three hours, as several participated in the communal clash and some cowered, the hills reverberated with gun fire, the clatter of stones, and the shattering of glass bottles used as weapons. The clashes spread quickly. Almost immediately, the communal embers strayed into Faridabad and the twinkling corporate edifices in Gurugram and stayed for days, leaving six people dead and 88 injured.

A month later, there is a tense quiet, but not quite.

The tarred road has little signs of activity except for a swarm of security personnel. At the entrance of the temple, under the intricately carved arch that spans the crumbling-around-the-edges road is a police vehicle and a clutch of chairs, on which are perched personnel from both the Haryana Police and Central Armed Police Force, watching for any movement. There is little sign of this on the road. But there is movement. In the hills; behind the boulders that loom over them at a height; hidden behind the trees and the shrubbery the jagged Aravallis around Nalhar are now home to over 300 men and teenagers, all Muslim, from at least six villages in the area that live in makeshift camps, hiding because they are afraid they will be arrested for their involvement in the riots.

It is not as if the police do not know they are there. In the past three weeks, there have been three alleged shootouts with security personnel and four people have been arrested, three of them with bullet injuries in the leg.