Saturday, March 27, 2010

"the determination that no one who dies shall go unmourned ... "

I think I've finally found the names, otherwise airbrushed from history, of the Asian people who died when Handsworth Post Office was set ablaze during the 1985 riots.

An AP report in the Lewiston (Maine) Daily Sun of Sept 10, 1985 (page 31 of 47) has the following :

"Police say they found two bodies in a burned-out post office in Lozells Road, Handsworth. They did not identify the victims, and said two other people were missing. Local presss reports said the two people who perished in the post office fire were Kassamali Moledia, 38, and his brother Amir, 44. They noted the Moledias were of Asian descent and that shops owned by Asian immigrants were the targets of some of the rioters."
What happened to the missing people, I wonder ?

Moledia is quite a rare name in this country or even in India - one or two in Leicester but otherwise rare even on the Web.