The SP government’s decision to withdraw terror charges triggers off a storm in the state, writes Puja Awasthi
The steely hope in Ayesha Qazmi’s voice pierces through a patchy telephone connection. “My burdens will go. It is now just a matter of days”, she exults from her home in the village of Sammopur, Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh. A more restrained hope surges through the voice of Ghulam Qadir who speaks from Kushar village (Kisthwar, Jammu and Kashmir). “The worst is over. Life will begin to move again”, he says.
Ayesha and Qadir have not met but are linked to each other through the fates of two men. In the former’s case, that man is her husband Tariq Qazmi, a doctor of Unani medicine who is prime accused in the 2007 serial blasts of Gorakhpur which left six injured. For Qadir, it is his son Sajjad-ur-Rehman, who was arrested for being an accomplice in the blasts on a confessional statement by Tariq Qazmi and his alleged co-conspirator Khalid Mujahid, a teacher.
With the UP government’s recent announcement of a recommendation to drop charges against Tariq Qazmi, Sajjad-ur-Rehman’s release has become a logical expectation for he was supposedly implicated by the former. However, the logic of the grey war against terror has seldom been that simple. As Rajeev Yadav, spokesperson of the Rihai Manch, a forum campaigning for the release of innocent youths framed on terror charges, explains: “The announcement is just a ploy to distract the community. The government is playing with emotions. The court is free to dismiss the government’s recommendation even if district officials endorse it. Terrorism is a political issue”.
Even if the court were to accept the government’s appeal, Tariq Qazmi would continue to remain in jail as he is also accused in the court blasts of November 23, 2007 which left 14 dead. The case is currently being tried in Barabanki and given the might of the state’s lawyers it is doubtful that the government will risk a similar announcement in it. That more important sub text has been lost in the cacophony that has followed the government’s announcement.
The government has also announced the dropping of treason charges (brought because they shouted anti-India slogans in a Lucknow court) against five accused from West Bengal – Mohamed Ali Akbar, Mukhtar Hussain, Azizur Rehman, Nasimul Hafiz and Nurul Isman. Once again, the more important fact of them still remaining in jail under the Explosives Act was lost in the criticism that the government was playing with fire. The Samajwadi Party had promised to release all innocents falsely jailed on terror charges in its election manifesto. According to a list compiled by the Rihai Manch, 25 such accused from the state are jailed in the state, 20 have been jailed outside the state while 10 accused from other states are in UP’s prisons.
Last November, the government made its first announcement (not recommendation) in the Rampur CRPF camp attack case and was promptly challenged through a petition filed in the Allahabad High Court. Since the government never actually filed an application, the petition was dismissed. This time a member of the Samajwadi Party is threatening to approach the court in Faizabad even though the government’s stand will become clear only on May 3, the next date for the hearing in the case against Tariq Qazmi.
Yet, a storm of protests is rising. The state BJP unit’s spokesperson Vinay Bahadur Pathak says, “There will be dangerous consequences of this politics of appeasement. If the government has to decide everything, why have courts?” Manish Mahajan, the state president of the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha says, “By rewarding terrorists, the government is stooping low to ensure its hold on the minority vote”.
Within the state’s Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) there are other worries. “All the hard work that went into building a case against the terrorists will be lost to political caprice. This will discourage the force and send out a wrong message”, says a high-ranking official.
Tariq Qazmi and Khalid Mujahid were arrested (according to the police version) from the Barabanki railway station with 1.250 kg RDX, six detonators, three cellphones and two SIM cards, a month after the Gorakhpur blast. On their confession, a few days later, Sajjad-ur-Rahman and Akhtar, both from Jammu and Kashmir, were also arrested.
In September of the following year, the Mumbai police made five arrests and declared that it had netted the group responsible for all blasts in the country since 2005, including Gorakhpur, thus punching holes in the claims of the state police.
In 2012, a report submitted to the state government by the one man Nimesh Commission (appointed by the previous Mayawati government in 2008) concluded that the police version of events on December 22, 2007 (the day of Tariq Qazmi and Khalid Mujahid’s arrest) was “suspicious” and suggested action against all those officials and personnel who played an “active role” in the arrests of the two, without actually naming anyone.
In a curious twist, the Samajwadi Party government has denied the existence of the report. As recently as March this year, the state’s home department, responding to a RTI query asking for a copy of the report said that it had never received it, hence the question of sharing it did not arise. Seven weeks later, the state’s home secretary cited the same report while announcing the proposal for Tariq Qazmi’s release.
The perils of this ambiguity are obvious to Zaheer Alam Falahi, uncle of Khalid Mujahid. “While it is good that the government is working on its promise, till it does not officially release the report, the perception that the recommendations were not backed by impartial investigations will grow. This will harm both the party and the community”, he says.
SR Darapuri, the state’s former Inspector General of Police, says that there are larger questions that must be answered. “The blasts were a fact, as were the arrests. The government must investigate who was responsible for both. Were the real culprits let off? Where did the explosives that the police claimed to have recovered from the accused come from?”
The steely hope in Ayesha Qazmi’s voice pierces through a patchy telephone connection. “My burdens will go. It is now just a matter of days”, she exults from her home in the village of Sammopur, Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh. A more restrained hope surges through the voice of Ghulam Qadir who speaks from Kushar village (Kisthwar, Jammu and Kashmir). “The worst is over. Life will begin to move again”, he says.
Ayesha and Qadir have not met but are linked to each other through the fates of two men. In the former’s case, that man is her husband Tariq Qazmi, a doctor of Unani medicine who is prime accused in the 2007 serial blasts of Gorakhpur which left six injured. For Qadir, it is his son Sajjad-ur-Rehman, who was arrested for being an accomplice in the blasts on a confessional statement by Tariq Qazmi and his alleged co-conspirator Khalid Mujahid, a teacher.
With the UP government’s recent announcement of a recommendation to drop charges against Tariq Qazmi, Sajjad-ur-Rehman’s release has become a logical expectation for he was supposedly implicated by the former. However, the logic of the grey war against terror has seldom been that simple. As Rajeev Yadav, spokesperson of the Rihai Manch, a forum campaigning for the release of innocent youths framed on terror charges, explains: “The announcement is just a ploy to distract the community. The government is playing with emotions. The court is free to dismiss the government’s recommendation even if district officials endorse it. Terrorism is a political issue”.
Even if the court were to accept the government’s appeal, Tariq Qazmi would continue to remain in jail as he is also accused in the court blasts of November 23, 2007 which left 14 dead. The case is currently being tried in Barabanki and given the might of the state’s lawyers it is doubtful that the government will risk a similar announcement in it. That more important sub text has been lost in the cacophony that has followed the government’s announcement.
The government has also announced the dropping of treason charges (brought because they shouted anti-India slogans in a Lucknow court) against five accused from West Bengal – Mohamed Ali Akbar, Mukhtar Hussain, Azizur Rehman, Nasimul Hafiz and Nurul Isman. Once again, the more important fact of them still remaining in jail under the Explosives Act was lost in the criticism that the government was playing with fire. The Samajwadi Party had promised to release all innocents falsely jailed on terror charges in its election manifesto. According to a list compiled by the Rihai Manch, 25 such accused from the state are jailed in the state, 20 have been jailed outside the state while 10 accused from other states are in UP’s prisons.
Last November, the government made its first announcement (not recommendation) in the Rampur CRPF camp attack case and was promptly challenged through a petition filed in the Allahabad High Court. Since the government never actually filed an application, the petition was dismissed. This time a member of the Samajwadi Party is threatening to approach the court in Faizabad even though the government’s stand will become clear only on May 3, the next date for the hearing in the case against Tariq Qazmi.
Yet, a storm of protests is rising. The state BJP unit’s spokesperson Vinay Bahadur Pathak says, “There will be dangerous consequences of this politics of appeasement. If the government has to decide everything, why have courts?” Manish Mahajan, the state president of the Akhil Bharat Hindu Mahasabha says, “By rewarding terrorists, the government is stooping low to ensure its hold on the minority vote”.
Within the state’s Anti Terrorist Squad (ATS) there are other worries. “All the hard work that went into building a case against the terrorists will be lost to political caprice. This will discourage the force and send out a wrong message”, says a high-ranking official.
Tariq Qazmi and Khalid Mujahid were arrested (according to the police version) from the Barabanki railway station with 1.250 kg RDX, six detonators, three cellphones and two SIM cards, a month after the Gorakhpur blast. On their confession, a few days later, Sajjad-ur-Rahman and Akhtar, both from Jammu and Kashmir, were also arrested.
In September of the following year, the Mumbai police made five arrests and declared that it had netted the group responsible for all blasts in the country since 2005, including Gorakhpur, thus punching holes in the claims of the state police.
In 2012, a report submitted to the state government by the one man Nimesh Commission (appointed by the previous Mayawati government in 2008) concluded that the police version of events on December 22, 2007 (the day of Tariq Qazmi and Khalid Mujahid’s arrest) was “suspicious” and suggested action against all those officials and personnel who played an “active role” in the arrests of the two, without actually naming anyone.
In a curious twist, the Samajwadi Party government has denied the existence of the report. As recently as March this year, the state’s home department, responding to a RTI query asking for a copy of the report said that it had never received it, hence the question of sharing it did not arise. Seven weeks later, the state’s home secretary cited the same report while announcing the proposal for Tariq Qazmi’s release.
The perils of this ambiguity are obvious to Zaheer Alam Falahi, uncle of Khalid Mujahid. “While it is good that the government is working on its promise, till it does not officially release the report, the perception that the recommendations were not backed by impartial investigations will grow. This will harm both the party and the community”, he says.
SR Darapuri, the state’s former Inspector General of Police, says that there are larger questions that must be answered. “The blasts were a fact, as were the arrests. The government must investigate who was responsible for both. Were the real culprits let off? Where did the explosives that the police claimed to have recovered from the accused come from?”
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