As deadly violence erupted in the northeast of New Delhi this week, with armed mobs rampaging the streets, a small hospital located in a densely packed Muslim neighborhood found itself at the epicenter of the unrest.
Al-Hind hospital, in the riot-torn mustafabad neighbourhood, was flooded with patients this week, and it has also become a place of refuge for people whose homes were burnt or destroyed.
"I was beaten and they vandalized my house and set everything on fire. I was beaten in this situation. We came here on Tuesday. They torched three houses and left nothing," Shabana Parveen -- a Muslim woman who delivered a baby during the citizenship protests -- said in a statement.
At least 38 people were killed and hundreds more injured in the worst sectarian violence in Delhi in decades, as groups of Hindus and Muslims clashed.
The violence began after weeks of protests over a citizenship law that prime minister Narendra Modi's government introduced in December, which eases the path to Indian citizenship for minority groups from neighboring Muslim-majority countries.
Critics say the law is biased against Muslims and undermines India's secular constitution. Modi's party has denied having any bias against india's 180 million Muslims.
On Thursday people were still trickling in, saying they had suffered acid attacks and beatings with rods.
Doctors said they were overwhelmed when dozens of wounded streamed into the 15-bed, two-story building. Some were carried on people's shoulders and others on wooden carts, stretching the hospital's resources to the limit.
"They particularly targeted vital organs. It felt as if the attackers knew human anatomy and as if they were from a medical profession. The two injured and other injuries that we saw were in the same condition, as all the stabs are in the vital organs," Meraj Ekram -- Doctor at Al-Hind Hospıtal in Delhi's Mustafabad area -- told reporters.
Many medicines ran out, as did oxygen supplies. But the flow of patients didn't stop.
