From Fun Park To Horror Park

Last week, during the Jat agitation for reservation in Haryana, a mob of "5000 to 15000"—eyewitness accounts vary—attacked Jurasik Park Inn, an iconic "fun" park in Sonepat. It's still not clear why they did this, but judging by the extent of damage, a better part of local fury was directed against this park, the area's most visible symbol of opulence and "fun".

The agitators—or those seeking to loot under cover of the ongoing mayhem—robbed the nearby TDI mall and other eateries, but their madness was directed against this amusement park. First, they ripped it apart with stones, sticks lined with iron nails, rods, scythes and bricks. Then they looted. Finally they burned it down.

"We were surveying the damage inflicted by agitators the previous night when an even bigger mob appeared in the morning. We pretended to join the crowd or they would have killed us," says a junior manager who now watches over the premises. He is an eyewitness to the entire episode which took place over February 20 and 21.

Most of the guards who watched over the park earlier have either quit or fled and the management has a new security team. Army-men also guard the premises.

Located on Haryana's national highway 1 to Delhi, Jurasik Park's 17 acres were a colossal display of wealth, abundance and luxury until the Jat agitations for reservation cracked open the state's socio-economic fault-lines. While residential complexes, smaller dhabhas, educational institutions and homes right next to the Park were spared, the mobs went after prosperous establishments—some of them were protected by local villagers. As one local man quipped, "Those who used to wear chor bazaar clothes entered showrooms during the agitations and came out wearing three branded t-shirts each."

Studies of South American countries show how visible signs of prosperity can create jagged fault-lines and stoke social unrest. "Another man's big showroom in front of your still-tiny shop makes you want to eradicate what the other has," says Prof Harish Puri, a political scientist. "That is why people went after car garages, showrooms—they wanted to take way what they perceive the other has, especially when they feel denied their due."

Crowds develop a sense of impunity, as if nobody is watching, generating a sense of impunity. "The heady cocktail is completed when alcohol enters the picture," says Puri. Of this last ingredient, the attackers found copious quantities at the bar inside the fun park. Empty liquor cases lay scattered inside on Sunday evening. First the attackers got drunk, then carted away TVs, making gaps in the concertina wiring. Broken TV sets, which fell before they could be whisked away still lie around. Two cars were set afire, including a Toyota Innova. "When you are high and angry, plus you have a weapon in hand, the consequences are devastating," says Puri.

The park has apparently borne the brunt of this devastation in Sonepat, for it had everything a maharajah of yore might have aspired to—marble statues of Grecian goddesses, plush dining halls, China and crystal, beds with mattresses two feet thick, lace curtains and tinted French windows. Meanwhile, the Jats, an agrarian community, claims it is losing its earlier advantage over other social groupings. Their fate, inextricably linked with agriculture, is in distress.

In this context, a gated fun park, which sports a 40-foot plastic dinosaur and—inexplicably—four decorative golden horses and a baby elephant made from Plaster of Paris, seems to have doubly attracted their ire. True, fake horses do not a maharajah make, but only the 5000-odd noveau riche from Delhi, Sonepat, Panipat and beyond, who could pay Rs 800 a head could afford the place—not the average farmer.

"It used to be such a beautiful place—you won't believe how good even the toilets were. Better than houses. Now it's all gone," says another young man, still employed at the Park as a handyman. When the mob descended, he too pretended to be part of it, for fear of being killed.

A white out-of-use aero-plane, refitted to accommodate a luxury dining hall, has been crushed and set alight. The "inn"—really an extremely plush small hotel—has been burned to a cinder, from the ground floor dining hall to the bedrooms on the top floor. Soot covers every inch of the walls, ash lines floors, metal and concrete rubble—fallen chandeliers, fans, air conditioners, wiring, computers, decorative items—and shattered glass crunches underfoot.

One man, an employee, is said to have died inside the park during the attack. Another jumped from the first floor but escaped with broken bones. Traces of their blood still soak the pavement. "We found the dead man hanging half inside-half outside a window," says the guard who witnessed the incident. "He just couldn't decide which death he wanted—choking on smoke or a great fall."

Multitudes of rural and semi-urban folks pushed past the park's wrought-iron gate, beyond its driveway, past the pet geese (they are alive and well), and spilled into the park's bars, restaurants and bedrooms. They ripped off posters of film stars in the amphitheatre and smashed the aquarium open—the fish sloshed to their death on the floor.

"Madam—they even killed our four horses and one elephant," says a third security guard, cracking a dark joke about what went down. The golden horses had heads cut open and deep gashes on their sides.