On 17 November, while communal violence was underway in Maharashtra's Nagpur, Irfan Ansari boarded an auto-rickshaw at about 11:00 pm to go the Nagpur railway station.
Communal tensions were high through the day following protests by Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal to demand for the removal of Aurangzeb's tomb and alleged desecration of a holy chadar during their demonstrations.
Irfan, a resident of Banda Nawaz Nagar and a welder by profession, was to catch a train to Itarsi, Madhya Pradesh, post midnight.
As he reached Gitanjali Chowk in Hansapuri area, about a kilometer away from the station, the driver abandoned Irfan after seeing a mob ahead. He decided to avoid the main road and walk the rest of the distance via small gullies. But what should have been a 15-minute walk turned fatal after he encountered a mob in one of the internal lanes he was passing by.
"The family told him to postpone his journey that day. If only he had listened, he would have been alive," Imran Ansari, his younger brother, told The Quint over the phone, still processing his brother's death in the holy month of Ramzan.