When Hamid (not his real name), a member of the prosperous Muslim sect called Dawoodi Bohra, received a threatening phone call from the Bajrang Dal, a Hindu fundamentalist group, he asked for police protection.

''We (the Dawoodi Bohra sect) have always been a peace-loving community,'' said Hamid, who recalls receiving the threat when he was in his grocery in Halol town three months ago.

Originally a Hindu caste, the 11th-century sect claims to have the real Quran and has its headquarters in the western port city of Mumbai. It has followers not just in India but in neighbouring Pakistan.

But neither the sect members' peaceful attitude nor their disdain for Sunni Muslims, who form the bulk of believers in India's rival Pakistan, saved it from taking the brunt of a pogrom against Muslims that swept through Gujarat last month.

Indeed, so tacit was official support for the pogrom that in the prosperous textile city of Ahmedabad, 120km west of Godhra, respectable people drove up in cars to shops belonging to Muslims — and carried away loot in broad daylight.

And for the first time, too, Bohras were targeted.

The pro-Hindu Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, publicly justified the attacks on Muslims by saying that they were a natural reaction to the Feb 27 firebombing of a train carrying Hindu devotees near Godhra railway station.

At least 58 people were burned alive in the Sabarmati Express, which connects Ahmedabad to Ayodhya town in northern Uttar Pradesh state, where Hindu fundamentalists are bent on building a temple at the site where they razed a 16th century mosque 10 years ago.

When relief for the victims was announced, the Hindu victims of the Godhra incident received more than US$5,000 each, but those who died in the reprisals that followed got half that amount, showing Modi's unabashed bias.

Hate sessions

As Uttar Pradesh, India's largest state with more than 160 million people, went to polls last month to elect a new provincial government, the BJP supported by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and the Bajrang Dal, revved up the temple issue to shore up its majority-Hindu vote bank.

These efforts included ''social upliftment'' meetings by the Bajrang Dal and its sister organisation the VHP or World Hindu Forum, whose purpose is now becoming painfully clear to Muslims like Hamid.

They were hate sessions against Muslims in general, and his prosperous sect in particular.

''Muslims are our enemies and they are ruling us' was the message given out at the meetings,'' said Hamid, who requested not his real name not be used for fear of reprisals.

The police protection he asked for has long been withdrawn.

The VHP even issued pamphlets calling for the economic boycott of Muslims by ''devout'' Hindus to ensure that businesses run by the minority community are broken once and for all.

''The police assured us that we were safe. But on Feb 27, after escorting us to the police station for safety, they accompanied Bajrang Dal and VHP activists back to our villages where they burned down our shops and homes,'' Hamid pointed out.

Elsewhere in Gujarat, the police stood by and watched as the Halol mosque was destroyed. Even doctors were told not to treat Muslim victims at the hospital, Hamid said.

Voters' lists were used to identify and kill our people and systematically destroy our property, he added.

Godhra, still under curfew, looks dead except for the occasional policeman and the few that are bold enough to venture out. Near the railway station, which has become something of a tourist spot, people still go to see the burnt-out coaches of the Sabarmati Express.

Huddled in the Bohra musafirkhana (traveller's home run by the sect), tucked away in the bylanes of Godhra, are 19 families.

Farida Abbasi Boliwalla from nearby Mora village said that 10 houses belonging to her extended family were destroyed in the recent communal violence.

''On Feb 28, a mob looted my father's cycle shop. They burnt my husband's tailoring shop and then burnt all our houses. My family, which includes my two sons and a daughter, barely managed to escape by breaking a window,'' Farida said.

She and 14 members of her extended family survived by hiding in the bathroom of a Hindu neighbour for three days without food or water. ''I used to hit my children to stop them from crying,'' she recalled.

''After three days, the police escorted us to the musafirkhana ,'' she said, shuddering at the memory of being attacked by neighbours with whom the family had lived happily in the past.

All 106 homes belonging to the Bohras were destroyed in Mora village. ''They (Hindu neighbours) threatened us with death if we ever went back. I refuse to go back there even if we have nothing to wear and my children are hungry,'' Farida said.

Protection money

Another woman recalled how all factories belonging to the Bohras in one industrial development area were burned and looted in the presence of police.

''The problem is that the majority of us do not vote for the BJP and the VHP is targeting us because of that. Soon after the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, our shops and homes were looted,'' another woman said.

The destruction of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in Dec 1992 unleashed a wave of communal violence across in which more than 3,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed.

But because Godhra has a history of communal tension, people here are no strangers to long periods of curfew.

''In the past police have demanded that we pay large amounts of money to ensure our personal safety and that of our property,'' said a female member of the Bohra community.

Still, protection money paid to the police carried no guarantee this time. Some victims said the mobs attacked them on and after the day the train was set on fire, demanding that the Bohras go to Pakistan.

''Even now, our people are unsafe and there is arson and looting in villages near Godhra. All this is pre-planned to destroy our community,'' one resident said.

When Pakistan was created in 1947 as a homeland for India's Muslims, it offered no particular attraction to the Bohra community. In fact, its members have suffered persecution at the hands of majority Sunni Muslims in that country.

But now its followers have been targeted for the first time in a pogrom in India. There is now a tremendous sense of isolation and insecurity among this once confident but secretive community, led by its powerful Dai Mutlaq or absolute preacher who is said to be an incarnation of the Caliph Ali.

''My timber business was right opposite the police station but that was no help. In fact, three of use who went to the police station to file a compliant ended up being locked up there,'' said Anish Onali Morawala.

''We are now slaves, we are no longer living in a democracy,'' said Dr Asgari Wagjipurwala from Godhra. ''Only Allah is protecting us.'' (IPS)