Shaheen Bagh market, closed since stir, opens after 5 months
Perfectly drawn circles adorn the lane outside shops in Shaheen Bagh market, but there are no customers. Inside the shops, workers carefully check the garments for damage — trousers nibbled by rats, shirts with dust-filled creases. The shirts have to be sent back, washed, and ironed before they can be put on display again. © Provided by Hindustan Times Shops in the Shaheen Bagh market partially open after a gap of five months, due to the anti CAA and NRC protests and later the lockdown against coronavirus, in New Delhi, India, on Friday, May 22, 2020. (Burhaan Kinu/HT PHOTO) The nationwide lockdown began on March 25. For the traders of Shaheen Bagh, it began many months earlier, on the evening of December 16, 2019. "We heard reports of stone-pelting in Jamia Nagar that afternoon. We were watching the news when we saw policemen chasing a mob outside our shops. The police asked us to down the shutters on our shops. We left in a hurry. The whole market closed within minutes, around ...