Events that preceded the blasts in Malegaon
Mustafa Khan
There are two events that took place in Malegaon that are viscerally related to the bomb blasts. One is the arms haul in May 2006. But even before this there were people who hobnobbed with the additional superintendent of police Rajwardhan. It is difficult to say exactly when Abrar Ahmed came in contact with the cop or when did his brother in law Farooq Verdha and wife Jannatunnisha preceded him in having some relationship with the top cop of the district. Was it such an important contact that a person committed suicide in the town for having known him? And was Abrar so important an accused that he was induced to become the state approver and was introduced to Lt Col Shrikant Purohit, Sadhvi Pragyasingh Thakur, Dyanand Pandey among others? Moreover, why was he given slow poisoning in Arthur road prison? By whom? Why his nephew was assaulted when he went to visit his uncle?
The earliest crucial date is not definite but it goes like this in the words of his intimate friend Sajjad. “Abrar was dealing in spare parts of power looms. If a part of it was broken and failed to perform he would go and bring replacement or have it repaired from a foundry. For this he was frequenting the foundry.
“There was a godown in front of the foundry. The police said that arms were seized from the godown. The police suspected the people who were (habitually) (or, lived) there. Abrar was visiting the place and so the police suspected him and caught him.
“There was a tea stall in front of the godown. The people of the neighbourhood habitually sat there to idle away their time. Abrar would visit the tea stall. One day he had a brawl with a friend there. The friend accused him by saying ‘You do not earn more than four to five hundred rupees. Then how can you afford to use a mobile phone?’
“People began to suspect that he (Abrar) had joined the conspirators (in the arms haul) or joined the police (as informer).” ( “After Explosion…Malegaon” Marathi title: Sphotaanter…Malegaon, Nilo Damle, April 2008, p.128)
Azhar Pervez. People say that he had met Abrar just before the blasts on September 8, 2006 and saw the new cycle with a box fitted on it. He admired it and wanted such a one for himself. He killed himself in very mysterious circumstances. He had cut his arteries on the ankle and writs with what the police maintain blade bought from a shop. However, his dead body was found in a room that was locked from outside! How could he a victim of cancer have had so much courage and supernatural power to cut artery at four to six vital parts of the body and bleed to death? Therefore the enigma of Abrar. What role did he play in the hands of the police?
At first he scoffed at the people of his town. He wrote so while in his early detention. He also agreed to become an approver. Then he changed slowly. He felt the police officers Rajwardhan, Sujit Kumar Jaiswal, ATS chief Krish Pal Raghuvanshi trapped him. Then he turned against them and wrote an affidavit and submitted it to MOCOCA court of Judge YD Shinde on April 18, 2009. When he came out of jail he accused his brother in law and wife to have betrayed him into the police trap.
One of the most talked of incident was this that haunted the people around their coffee tables in the town of Malegaon. Another was the fracas of Abrar referred earlier in the book of Nilu Damle. What he has recorded was already in the public domain by which I mean grapevine or hearsay. This also became the leitmotif of my book “Aggressive Hindutva Terror and Malegaon” (June, 2011). There was also another interlude, perhaps apocryphal. It goes like this that the quarrel between Abrar and his friend went to such an extent that it resulted in a brawl and the friend snatched the mobile phone of Abrar and took away the SIM,memory card. The parties went to the sitting MLA Sheikh Rashid. They were so adamant that the leader was not successful in resolving. He carried the matter right up to the then chief minister Vilas rao Deshmukh. He solved(?) it or quashed(?) the matter. The trail runs cold as Damle does not give his respondent’s full name or address or contact number. However, Damle’s contact is 09820971567.
This much is the story told in the town so often that it does not strike as remarkable. In the definition of story by EM Forster the events fit in a good story, like: The king died and then the queen died. But then a novel has a plot based on causation. The king died and therefore the queen died of the grief. This is the plot of a novel. What the cops and investigation agencies have done? They have given sops to the mainstream newspapers from time to time. They were good short stories to read. But that was not the plot of the novel. That was like One Thousand and One Nights of Arabia told by Shahezadi to the Arabian monarch. She wanted him to sleep and spare her life.
Each reader should take up pen and write out what does he see as the probable end. In the meantime the ATS of Maharashtra must be allowed to make it more popular by its foray into the Batla House and arrest more innocent for the sleepy king to lapse into a slumber.
However, what happened in the Batla House on Monday February 13, 2012 is a repeat of the arms haul and bomb blasts in Malegaon 2006. The police came to arrest a person who was said to be connected to Students Islamic Movement of India. Zahid was in Phooosangvi in Yavatmal. They arrested his brother Javed and framed him in the arms haul case of May 2006. Afterward they also arrested Zahid and framed him in the bomb attacks of September 8, 2006. Zahid is now out on bail. Javed is still languishing in jail. The British left a rich legacy for police too. They believed that some castes in India are biologically and mentally thieves and would arrest their members when theft cases came to their notice. In modern day India the police do that same with the Muslims. There are scores of cases of which what the Maharashtra police did on Monday at Batla House was an example albeit a repeat of what they did in the cases of the two brothers in Malegaon. The Bhatkal brothers also fall into the same pattern. As the standoff between Maharashtra police and Delhi police continues there is need for Scotland Yard detectives to play a fair role in investigation. They surely would not be in a muddle as to Indian police’s Hobson’s choice of complexity whether Taqi is Naqi, Zahid is Javed or one Bhatkal is like the other.