By U Sudhakar Reddy
Syed Imran Khan, 26, can’t sleep at night. When he finally slips into a fitful slumber, he sees hooded policemen approaching him with batons. Screaming ‘mat maro, mat maro,’ he wakes up bathed in sweat.
Likewise, Abdul Raheem, a 30-year-old trader, shudders when he recalls the buzz of the electric wires which police used to give repeated shocks to his genitals in a torture chamber where he was kept blindfolded for hours and days.
Another youth, a Unani doctor, urinated blood after hours of torture only to have a leering cop tell him, “What does it matter to a dying man?”
These are just few of the dozens of Muslim youth picked up and tortured by Hyderabad cops in their excessively zealous and lopsided investigation after the Mecca Masjid blast of May 18, 2007.
There was no sifting of evidence, no objective probe to find out who triggered the blast, just a blind latching on to the ‘Islamic terrorist’ tag and Gestapo-like operations in the dead of the night to round up bewildered and clueless youth from their beds.
Blindfolded, they were kept in isolated farm houses in the outskirts of the city. Chained and tortured for days together, the traumatised youth were finally forced to give confessional statements that they were behind the blasts.
But as the slogan of Satyameva Jayate emblazoned on the caps and shoulders of these senior cops indicates, truth did triumph at last. It has now become evident that the Muslim youth had nothing to do with the blast, which was the handiwork of a Hindu right wing outfit.
But truth became the biggest casualty in the initial investigation of the blast when cops acted in a brutal manner without even considering the illogical nature of their assumption that Muslim youth would trigger a blast in the Mecca Masjid.
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18 months in jail, for no fault
Syed Imran Khan, 26, engineering student
Three days after the Mecca Masjid blast, on May 21, around 80 to 90 policemen surrounded my house at Hasmathpet in Bowenpally. They spread over the entire locality — like they were trying to nab a big terrorist. I was about to sleep after dinner when they dragged me from my house saying that I, along with my uncle Shoaib Jagirdar from Jalna in Maharashtra, had conspired with one Nayeem alias Sameer, who was allegedly caught on the Bangladesh border.
I was doing my third year engineering after finishing school from Kendriya Vidyalaya. I played cricket and volleyball for my college. I was also working part-time as a phone banking officer for ICICI.
The cops booked two false cases against me — a conspiracy case and one for stocking RDX. The cops said that I knew how to transfer funds and I was apparently instrumental in aiding terrorists. After picking me up, they took me to a farm house in the city outskirts. Over the next 10 days of illegal custody, they gave electric shocks to my private parts. They then released me stating I was innocent. However, again in June, they caught me and subjected me to narco tests.
Though the court had given permission for a single test, they conducted it twice. The second time they gave me an overdose of narcotics. Many police officials were in the narco room. They didn’t give me a chance to speak. The police say Nayeem had visited our house. He had come with my uncle Jagirdar for a meal. I don’t know anything about him and his whereabouts. But the name Nayeem changed my life.
I spent 18 months in jail. I have never seen RDX in my life, but the police claim I had stocked 10 kg of the explosive. After the ordeal, representatives from the National Commission for Minorities visited us and I retook admission with great difficulty at Lords Institute of Engineering and Technology to complete my studies. I still wake up often at night shivering with fear. I still cry in sleep, sometimes shouting ‘mat maro, mat maro’.
The police changed my image to that of a goon. My family too suffered. My dad ran from pillar to post while I was in custody and my mother was inconsolable. I lost three years of my academic career. Advocate Muzafarulla Khan stood by me and helped me to fight my case. I still have faith in the CBI. They were supportive and told me I was innocent. The cops, who called me a terrorist, should call a press conference and announce I am innocent and that I was implicated in a false case.
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I was threatened to confess Mohammed
Rayeesuddin, 27, electrician
I was a witness when the Gujarat police shot dead my friend Saleem Mujahid in front of the DGP’s office in October 2004. Since then I have been under police scanner.
Shahed Bilal is from our locality and we knew him since childhood. When the police asked me if I knew Bilal I said ‘yes’ and this answer changed my life for the worse. The police implicated me in a case of conspiracy. Is it a crime that I hail from the same locality where Shahed Bilal was born and brought up?
After the Mecca Masjid blast in 2007, the police asked me to visit the Special Investigation Cell office in connection with the Saleem Mujahid case. Instead, they asked me who was behind Mecca Masjid blast.
I told them it could be some right wing groups as no Muslim would do it. They released me. Three months later they caught me again after the twin blasts in Lumbini Park and Gokul Chaat. This time they tortured me in their camps in Premavatipet near the Greyhounds office. They shifted me to three-four farm houses.
I was then produced in court on the false charge of conspiracy. They branded me as Bilal’s associate but the court acquitted me. Even after three years I still suffer from several health problems due to the torture and narco-analysis test. Recurrent severe headaches have made my life miserable. The police detained me illegally for eight days. I also spent six months in jail. I lost my job at the jewellery shop where I was working. I am now working as an electrician.
But the police hound me even now. They continue to ask whether I knew Viqar Ahmed. They came to me after some persons fired at policemen at Shah Ali Banda. I don’t know who Viqar is. I was, however, a witness to the Mecca Masjid blast. I helped the injured but the police implicated me. They put a revolver to my temple and threatened me to confess that I was involved in the blast.
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Nobody wants to marry me
Abdul Raheem, 30, provision store owner
On September 3, 2007, a police inspector called me up. I was an auto driver then. He asked me who had carried out the blast at Mecca Masjid. After the Lumbini Park blast the police called me again. This time they took me to a camp in Gandipet.
When we reached, I saw they were already beating several boys in the farm house. The police subjected me to abuses, beat me with iron pipes and gave me electric shocks. There were around 40 people in the camp and in our room there were perhaps four or five of us but I am not certain as I was always blindfolded. I could hear others crying for help as the police tortured them.
I used to shiver when I heard the sound of their boots come towards me. After five days in the camp I was taken to jail.
My marriage, which was scheduled at that time, was cancelled and after the ordeal no one wanted to give their daughter’s hand to me despite the fact that we had been staying in Malakpet locality for 20 years. After this episode we shifted to Chandrayangutta. Initially there too no one wanted to marry me and with great difficulty could we convince them.
I am not a member of any organisation and there are no other cases against me. I spent five months in jail for no fault of mine and the court acquitted me. My mother by then had already suffered two strokes and I still suffer from health problems.
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I was subjected to third degree methods
Dr Ibrahim Ali Junaid, 28 years, Unani doctor
I was a third year BUMS student at Government Nizamia Tibbi Unani College which is situated just opposite Mecca Masjid. On May 18, 2007, I was at the Masjid offering Friday prayers when the blast occurred. I found several people injured including one of my professors, whom I shifted to the hospital.
Two days after the blast I got a call from the Special Investigation Cell. They detained me at the Secunderabad Task Force office and interrogated me till evening. They asked some strange and defamatory questions like, ‘why do you grow a beard?’ They also said, “You Muslims can only do this kind of blasts”.
They never suspected the right wing groups. They picked me up from my house, blindfolded me and and harassed me for three to four days. One of the officers put his revolver to my temple and threatened that I would be killed in an encounter if I did not confess that I was involved in the blast.
The police official told me that it was my last day on earth and asked me if I wanted to eat anything special before I was put to death. Later, they released me.
In August, after the twin blasts I went to Delhi to attend a conference in Hamdard University. After my return on September 3, I was picked up at Yakatpura Railway Station and for a moment I thought someone was kidnapping me. After a 90-minute journey we reached an unknown location in the city outskirts in a farm house where they ran a torture camp.
They stripped me and beat me on the soles of my feet. Third degree methods were adopted. They gave electric shocks to my ears, nose and joints. When I recited verses from the Holy Quran, they gave me electric shocks on my teeth and tongue. There was even blood in my urine. When I told the police about this, they replied ‘marnewale ke liye ye chhoti baat hai’. I feared that I would be killed in an encounter.
The police also questioned me why I went to the State Human Rights Commission along with the rights activists in the Sohrabuddin case. Later I was taken for a narco analysis test. I was subjected to the test for eight hours and for a week I couldn’t come out of the after-effects of the narco test. Later, they arrested me officially in the case and I was in jail for five months.
After my release the college refused to re-admit me. I approached the AP High Court and was allowed to write the exams. Then they said I did not have the requisite attendance to write the exams. I lost one precious year of my career.
The police, however, continued to visit my college and my home. I worked part time in a private hospital where intelligence sleuths came and questioned the hospital staff. During elections the police asked me for a “bound over”.
They had foisted two cases against me. One case related to the burning of a pandal on graveyard land in 2003. The court had acquitted me in this case. Again in 2007 they arrested me in a conspiracy case. This case was also cleared by the court. I asked the police that when there were no cases pending against me why should I be “bound over.” I appealed to the State Election Commissioner and following this, the police didn’t come back to me.
After my name cropped up in the blast case, none of my relatives came to our house and even our neighbours and friends stayed away from us. We were ostracised from the community.
(The writer met these men who narrated their spine chilling experience
