On Monday, as a local magistrate gave the Crime Branch his custody for two weeks, police claimed Haleem is a crucial link in the Saturday blasts and that grilling him would unravel the execution of and the conspiracy behind the terror act.In a time of tragedy and terror, everybody, justifiably, wants answers, culprits, punishment.The challenge then is not to reach for the quick routes, the easy demonisations.Unfortunately, the Indian State has not quite met that challenge.In pursuit of this, in an attempt to sift fact from prejudice, TEHELKA conducted an investigation across India over three months and 12 cities.The investigation found that entrenched prejudices in the executive and the judiciary, an abject lack of political will against framing scapegoats, and a 24×7 news media that demands instant whodunit answers and unquestioningly copy-pastes every unproven police and intelligence story on terrorist networks has morphed into a tragic persecution of hundreds of people falsely accused of terrorism.SINCE SUNDAY, in anonymous plants in the stenographic news media, police have claimed that Haleem is a SIMI member linked with Pakistan- and Bangladeshbased terrorists.
He said they planned, among others, to assassinate BJP leader LK Advani and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi.Police have said Haleem was absconding since he was named an accused in this case in 2002.This year, on May 27, an inspector from the police station sent Haleem a onepage handwritten notice in Gujarati.You are directed to submit a list of their names, addresses and phone numbers.That application clearly mentioned that Haleem would be the main speaker at the event.He is a man of religion and has never indulged in terrorism.Abdul Haleem, who turned 43 on July 13, hails from Uttar Pradesh and has lived in Ahmedabad from 1988.He is a preacher with a puritanical Islamic sect called Ahle Hadis that began on the subcontinent some 180 years ago and has survived a frowning Sunni orthodoxy.The police claim its members include many terror accused such as those of the July 2006 Mumbai train blasts.The sect, with a claimed membership of 30 million in India, denies the charge.It points out that Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil was the chief guest at its national symposium two years ago at New Delhi.
In Ahmedabad, Haleem led the 5,000-odd Ahle Hadis followers for 14 years, resigning three years ago to minister a small mosque so he could begin life as a scrap dealer to earn a regular income to feed his wife and seven children, the oldest two of whom study at a madarsa in Delhi.An Ahmedabad native named Shahid Bakshi, who lived in Kuwait and was visiting his home, came to meet Haleem with two other Muslims.One of them was from Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh who also lived in Kuwait.A week later, one camp responded saying it had found 34 children for such care.Haleem phoned the Kuwait expatriate, who was then in Moradabad, and also wrote to him about the offer.But getting no response, the plan died and, importantly, no children were ever sent.Three months later, in August 2002, Delhi Police arrested Shahid Bakshi and the other expatriate from Kuwait allegedly with 4.The Moradabad trader was also arrested from his hometown.All three were charged under the Prevention of Terrorism Act for conspiring to carry out terrorist acts.As both Bakshi and Haleem were from Ahmedabad, police there were informed.The police instantly released Haleem who rushed to the court where his statement on his illegal detention was duly recorded and is part of official documents.
The charge-sheet in the case clearly admits that the so-called conspiracy had remained on paper and no children ever travelled from Ahmedabad to Moradabad.The law says the police have to follow due legal process before declaring an accused as absconding.This includes searches at his house and workplace in view of independent witnesses, and recording statements from neighbours to establish that the accused has not been seen for a long time.The Ahmedabad police did not bother with this exercise.The entire case against Haleem is based on a letter he wrote to the expatriate from Kuwait, Farhan Ahmad Ali.Dated August 7, 2002, the letter makes no reference to terrorist training or any other unlawful activity.Haleem wrote that six of the children were orphans and the rest poor.The court accepted the police version even though the only witnesses to the alleged recovery of RDX were policemen.Ahmad Ali had claimed that he was arrested at the airport as he was to board a flight to Kuwait, and said he had tickets as proof.
Both Bakshi and Ahmad Ali appealed at the Delhi High Court against their conviction.Yet, another Gujarat High Court judge denied them bail and both continue to languish in jail.On Sunday, July 27, the morning after the blasts, Tahir visited the crime branch office with trepidation.After all, Yasir is an ex-SIMI member whose father and one brother are jailed on charges of terrorism.With his brother and father suspected as dreaded terrorists, the Hyderabad Police should have kept tabs on Yasir all the time and instantly known if he was aiding terrorists.This reporter interviewed Yasir in Hyderabad a month before his arrest, on his birthday on June 12, at an engineering workshop that his father had set up three decades ago with borrowed money and skills picked up as an assistant to a roadside mechanic.In the din of machines, Yasir was happily engaged in managing customers crowding the small front office.A shy man with a Boy Scout smile, Yasir seems a victim of patently bogus cases against him.A day later, the police slapped another case against the three, alleging that one of them was arrested making a speech against the government.The other two, including Yasir, were shown as absconding.They went back to the court and were sent to jail, where Yasir spent 29 days before securing bail.At this, Gujarat police officer Narendra Amin took out his service revolver and shot dead one protestor.They should have arrested and produced Amin before a magistrate.Amin proceeded to Ahmedabad with Maulana Nasiruddin in his custody.
MEANWHILE, A tragedy has befallen the main complainant against Amin in the Hyderabad shootout case.Amazingly, the police filed seven confessions from the two accused over the next 18 days.Police then filed their eighth confessions in which they allegedly accepted being SIMI members and the attendant terror charges.Of course, Nasir has retracted his confessions alleging torture.Yet, he has little hope against biases in the judicial system.He told me that the police denied them food and water and subjected them to repeated beatings.The other piece of paper had a message that seemed to be a sort of code that I could not immediately decipher.Also, when I examined the South India map, Udupi had a sort of indication with a red marker against it.Perhaps they were planning to strike at the place during a religious function..
