Udaipur stabbing: A school fight ended in murder – and sparked violence in Indian city

Zakir was taken into custody and sent to a juvenile home, while his father was arrested on the charges of abetment to murder, Mr Purohit said.

The next day, following a familiar pattern in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled (BJP-ruled) states, bulldozers demolished Heena’s rented home, leaving her and her four daughters homeless.

“My son deserves punishment and I hope he learns to be a better human being,” Heena said. “Why did they have to punish his entire family?”

Though the violence has subsided, Udaipur residents are shaken by how a simple fight escalated. Many now fear their once-integrated Hindu-Muslim neighbourhoods are being torn apart along religious lines.

“Things are getting worse and we can feel it,” one of Heena’s neighbours said on condition of anonymity.

For Devraj’s family, everything else pales in comparison to the pain of losing their son.

“This is the news every parent dreads,” his father Pappu Lal told the BBC.

A cobbler in Kuwait, he found out about the incident while he was thousands of miles away from home. By the time he got home, his son was unconscious. He died without getting a chance to see or speak to his father.

The trauma, Mr Lal said, catapulted his wife and him into debilitating sadness and sparked fury inside him.

“Their house was demolished but we lost our son,” Mr Lal said. “The house can be built again but our child? He will never come back.”