Posted on September 2, 2007
There has been talk of Islam and terrorism making rounds in the world since even before 9/11. However the frequency of allegation has registered
sharp increase in recent years. Paralleling this is the unbelievably strong resistance of Muslims in India that the investigative agencies have not professionally done anything that is cogent(except, of course, Bombay serial bomb blasts 1993). As a result the sense of being suspected and targeted is excruciating. Come September 8, it would be one full year for the shabe ba rat explosions in Malegaon which killed more than 40 people and injured around three hundred mostly children, beggars and elderly.
Why is there reluctance among the members of the Muslim community to have any faith in the police and crime detection agencies of the government? Soon after bomb explosions in Malegaon the people roughed up a senior police officer, unturned a police jeep, had a running battle with the police around an adjoining police station, familiar site for other such confrontation in the past. This was going on within minutes of the blasts almost like what the square and streets around Mecca mosque and Charminar witnessed on May 18, 2007. Is it only emotional outburst and unwieldy nature or anything else that irks the people?
Blaming the terrorists or agents provocateur from across the border has become part of the regimen. But there was a startlingly new element injected in the scene. Muslims were told that it could be a section of their own people responsible behind the blasts in the old cemetery and Mushawart chowk. That too the sections were named: wahabis, tablighi jamat and other purists who did not countenance the age old vigil and visit to the graves. This strange thought spread from the columns in the newspapers from outside even before all the killed were properly buried. Till that day no one in the town had even thought in the wildest fancy that it would be so. The angst that the grieved feel is this ascribing to the closely knit community what they refuse to believe. There has never been any acrimony between the sunnis, wahabis or the tablighi jamat. Perplexed by the design which others have discovered there, the people felt betrayed and insulted after being injured in their sensibility. Till today Shafiq Ahmed (father of a-would-be-doctor young son on the way to China but killed in the blasts) has not wavered in his disbelief in the alleged culprits caught by the police. “I told Sonia Gandhi and (Chief Minister) Deshmukh that I was ready to give the government Rs 10 lakh if they caught the real culprits,” he asseverates on the eve of the shabe ba rat that would complete one year of suffering. “The government promised to nab the real culprits in 24 hours. But it has been 12 months and I am still waiting to see the real bombers behind bars.”
A contributing factor is that the police are constructing their charges drawing upon confessions of the police informers or drug addicts. The local people know all too well what figure these shady characters cut in the town. Their condition is so desperate that they would do anything to eke out existence. Informing police is an easy source of ready money. They would stick to the police and felons alike like the leech. The entire case is being built up on the testimony of Abrar Ahmed who has denounced the people of Malegaon publicly through Urdu newspapers. He was reported in the newspapers to have disappeared and then his lawyer brother filed for habeas corpus and that is how this closely ensconced person surfaced. He has also expressed fear of police who hold him. Unless the police give a detailed statement regarding these, the misgivings of the general public would stick. The first person arrested was Nurul Hooda who had already been in police custody around the time of the explosions and was under close police surveillance.
To complicate the already murky atmosphere there appeared on the scene another police informer Sajid Sheikh. He had been working with the Anti Terrorist Squad since September 8,2006. He went on to meet home minister RRPatil and the State Minority Commission Chairperson Naseem Siddiqui. According to Sajid the conspirators had already visited and surveyed the town under the ruse of looking for a girl for marriage. He says that he was forced to tell about the conspiracy when he found that the police were not taking the correct line of investigation. The chief of Mahrashtra ATS Krish Pal Raghuvanshi does not trust him but Chairperson Minority Commission does. The deputy police commissioner of CBI Raman Tyagi is unaware of Sajid.
The police sketches of the two alleged bombers who bought bicycles from Pangrapol shopping complex haunt the people in their sleep. The two did not ride the cycles but walked and pulled them and according to report were in a hurry to reach the destined spot. The police have simply made no headway on this. So the discontent of the local people increases as the plot thickens.
The angst of the grieved father Abdul Waheed(a retired school teacher) in Hyderabad is a counterpoint to Shafiq Ahmed’s. His son Mohammad Shahid saw his younger brother Zahid picked up from their house by police in the case of murder of a BJP leader. He simply walked out on the family and according to his father has never had any contact with the family. The police have given him a new name in addition, Bilal. His mother Hafeeza is hysterical in her insistence that he is Shahid and not Bilal. Waheed feels very deeply about how things are turning out. The move to make terror as treason belies what he says. What if his son is proved a terrorist? "Then don't spare him. We are born here. We are happy to be Indian. We live in this land and we don't want anything done to this land. If he is a terrorist kill him."
Such strong reaction is matched by his wife. Both of them are in agony over the repercussions. The members of the community have had faith in them and so the thought that a son of theirs would cause murder and mayhem has not crossed their path. If their son were otherwise so they would be tragically betraying their own people and what would they account for when they face god on the day of reckoning. That momentous thought is very disturbing to them. Blowing up people at prayer in a mosque as well as in cemetery is unthinkable for a Muslim. Of all the places Mecca mosque is the most cherished and revered spots in the old city of Hyderabad and even in the erstwhile Nizam state territory. The same is true of the cemetery and the mosque in Malegaon. Of all the times the shab be barat is the occasion of piety and prayer which involves each and every Muslim. There is no exemption to anyone on the basis of group identity. Every one is deeply concerned because the future course is shaped by the almighty on that night. The forgiveness of the sins of the dead also can be lessened by prayer and repentance. So the dead and the living are both joined in a union of prayer and forgiveness and hope of a better future for all the members of family and community. Into such piety and sanctity the very thought of terror is out of place.
mustafakhan1948@gmail.com
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