HYDERABAD: A Hindu couple, Papalaland Jayshree, who fought fundamentalist forces to give life to a Muslim girl, Sonia, orphaned during the 2007 Hyderabad blasts have now been nominated for National Communal Harmony award by the National Commission for Minorities.Papalal found a little girl, then four-years-old, at the Gokul Chat Centre blast site and figured out that the child was a Muslim who had been orphaned. He and his wife took little Sonia home where she lived with the couple.Once it became publicly known that a Muslim child was growing up in a Hindu family, Muslim groups asked the family to hand over the child to them. Papalal refused and asked how it could be a better option for the child to go to an orphanage.Muslim leaders intervened and relented, saying if the child is brought up as a Muslim, she can grow up in a Hindu family.So Papalal agreed not to make the child wear a ‘bindi’ (a hindu religious symbol) and she would not be brought up as a Hindu.But their small neighbourhood in Chudibazaar area of Begum Bazaar objected to the ‘Muslim’ child growing up in a Hindu family and locality.However, despite all this Papalal and his wife continued to face the wrath from the Hindu and Muslim communities. He was even sent to jail on the basis of cases aimed at harassing him till he gave up Sonia.Even his own brother turned against him.
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