*Manufacturing 'Terrorists' The Indian Way*
*Yoginder Sikand*
Almost every other day, newspapers are agog with stories about 'dreaded
Muslim terrorists' being nabbed across the country. At the same time, savage
violence unleashed by Hindutva groups continues unabated without any
effective steps being taken against them. In the on-going 'war on terror'.
globally as well as within India, Muslims have come to be framed
collectively as 'terrorists', while terrorism engaged in by people belonging
to other communities is generally condoned or ignored altogether or, at
least, is not described in the same terms. In India today, Muslim youths are
being indiscriminately picked up and tortured by the police, in many cases
falsely accused of being terrorists. Many of them have been languishing in
jails for years now and yet no one ever seems to care.]
Take the case of Muhammad Parvez Abdul Qayyum Shaikh of Gujarat. According
to his aunt, Qamar Jahan, on the 2nd of April 2003, while he was on his way
to fit a water appliance, he was arrested by CBI officer Tarun Barot and
others. For three days his family knew nothing his whereabouts. On the
fourth day, she says, 'We saw the news and realized that Parvez had been
arrested under allegations of having a Chinese made pistol and some gun
powder. However, this powder is used for cleaning the Aqua Guard machines.'
Parvez, she says, was brutally beaten and tortured by the officers, with
Officer Vanzara allegedly asking Parvez to refer to him as Khuda (God) and
beating him ruthlessly. While in jail they forced him to sign on blank
papers. He was reportedly taken by the CBI officers to Gandhinagar where he
was further tortured for 21 days. He was then charged in the DCP-6 case,
Tiffin bomb blast case and in the Haren Pandya murder case (the last
mentioned of which, incidentally, Pandya's own father accuses Gujarat Chief
Minister Narendra Modi as having instigated). He was sentenced to fourteen
years in jail for the last-mentioned case, although his aunt maintains that
he is innocent.
27 year-old Sardar, a Muslim youth, works as a plumber in Coimbatore, Tamil
Nadu. He was arrested at the age of 17, some months after the February 1998
Chennai bomb blasts. The initial accusation against Sardar was that he had
been involved in a street fight. He was apparently kept illegally imprisoned
for a month, and only after that was an FIR was lodged against him. This
time he was accused of carrying two pipe bombs and rioting. The offence was
non-bailable. He was remanded and kept in the Vellore Jail for first fifteen
months, even though there were no witnesses against him. The special court
set up for the bomb blasts refused to let him be tried as he was a minor.
Eventually, nine and half years later, in the final judgment the court
apparently found him not guilty of any of the charges put on him and he was
acquitted, but only after having spent almost a decade languishing in jail,
where he was brutally tortured. Even after his acquittal the police have
allegedly not stopped harassing and hounding him, and they still restrict
his movements.
Noor ul-Hoda, the son of a desperately poor daily-wage labourer from
Malegaon in Maharashtra, is yet another hapless Muslim man who has, so he
insists, been falsely implicated as a terrorist by the police. In September
2006, he was picked up by the police from his home. On the same day, they
brought him back , searched the house (without producing a search warrant),
and, finding nothing, took him back into police custody. The next day the
police charged Noor with possession of twenty books considered as 'illegal
literature'. While in police custody, he is said to have been forced,
through torture and threats by his interrogators that they would kill his
family, to sign a blank piece of paper, which was later used as evidence of
a 'confession'. This was, it is claimed, used to charge him under the
draconian MCOCA for allegedly being a member of the team that carried out
the Malegaon bombings. This, he says, is completely false as he was at the
local mosque on the day of the bomb blasts. The local special executive
officer has given an affidavit validating this. Noor claims that Police
Inspector Sachin Kadum had threatened him thus: 'Although I am aware of the
fact that you are not involved in the bomb blast, we will still capture you
and we will see if you can get out of this situation.'
In October 2006 Noor was taken to Bangalore for brain mapping and
narco-tests. These proved negative, but the experience was harrowing. During
the narco-test he was given powerful electric shocks and was badly beaten.
His ribs were also battered. The doctor, Malti , asked him to say what the
police wanted him to say or else he would be more deeply implicated in the
bomb blast case. 'When I did not repeat the words electric shocks were given
to my ear', he says. While he was in the custody of the Nasik police, they
tortured him severely at the ATS office, saying that he should state what
the police wanted him to—in other words, to give a false 'confession'. 'In
the month of Ramzan while I was fasting I was beaten so much that I
fainted', he says. 'Inspector Sachin Kadum and Inspector Khan Gekar used to
abuse me and say that if you do not confess we will bring all your sisters
here. We will make them naked and photographs will be taken and they will
also be beaten,' he adds. They also threatened to implicate Noor's brother
in the case. Finally, they were able to force him to make a false
'confession' by taking his signature on a blank piece of paper, but he later
retracted this 'confession'.
Muhammad Hanif Adul Razzak Shaikh from Gujarat is yet another victim of
state terrorism. On the 28th of April, 2003, around two dozen men rushed
into Hanif's house, but since Hanif was said to have been away attending a
friend's funeral in Himmatnagar, they dragged his brother, Yasin, to the
police station where he was beaten up. They picked him up without an arrest
warrant and detained him for twelve days until the 3rd of May, when Hanif
came back and presented himself at the Crime Branch. He was immediately put
into detention and the CBI searched his factory but recovered nothing.
Mohammad Hanif was in the business of making bags. The police claimed that
the bomb which was used in the Tiffin bomb blast and in another such blast
had been made in his factory. But when Hanif refused to accept these
allegations, the police tortured him severely and even threatened to arrest
his brother Yasin if he did not comply with their orders. After this, they
allegedly forced a false 'confession' out of him to implicate him in the
blasts. His interrogators tortured him mercilessly and he was then presented
in court on the 10th of May 2003. There, Hanif refused to accept the charges
against him, which allegedly prompted the magistrate to say that the police
should take Hanif in for some more khatirdari ('hospitality'), by which was
meant even greater torture. During this remand, Hanif was said to have been
subjected to third degree torture, brutally beaten and forced to sign
numerous false statements. The forced 'confession' was apparently used as
evidence to prolong his remand stay. He retracted his statement in the court
but after appearing in court for the second time the judge ordered that he
should be treated to some more 'hospitality'. After this, he is said to have
been compelled to sign another 'confession', on the basis of which he was
sentenced to 10 years in jail. During the five years he has spent in jail so
far Hanif's wife as well as his mother died. A father of four, one of his
daughters has tuberculosis. His small bag-making unit has been closed ever
since he was put into jail and his family now lives in abject penury.
Maulana Mohammad Naseerudin of Hyderabad was arrested in August 2004
immediately after addressing a meeting of fellow Muslims at a local mosque.
The Anti-Terrorism Squad accused him of conspiring to blow up a Hindu temple
in Hyderabad, a charge that he denied. The next month he was released on
bail, but on the condition that he would report to the CID office on a
weekly basis. On 31st September, 2004, when the Maulana reached the CID
office he found the Gujarat police waiting for him. They took him into
custody, accusing him of incitement violence in Gujarat in his speeches in
the mosque. In actual fact, so it is said, he had preached for relief and
aid for Muslims in Gujarat who had been brutalized by the state, the police
and Hindutva forces. The police failed to give any evidence at the time of
his detention and subsequent trial, simply claiming that he was inciting
communal hatred during his sermons.
The news of the Maulana's arrest spread quickly and he was put into a bus
and given a drug to incapacitate him. The protestors asked the police for
the arrest warrant. 23 year-old Mujahid Saleem Azmi, a friend of the family,
started questioning the procedures during the arrest, and, after some
prompting by the expanding crowd, the police released the Maulana. A heated
exchange between Police Officer Narendra and Mujahid began. The officer
shamelessly shouted at Mujahid, 'Have you people forgotten Gujarat? I will
finish you all off.' Mujahid replied that he was not scared of his threats
and that the officer should conduct himself on the basis of the law. The
police officer then said that if he was looking for a warrant he would show
him a warrant and took out his gun and fired point blank at Mujahid. The
rest of the police officers started firing in the air. They pushed the
Maulana back into the van and drove off. The ATS provided safe passage for
the police to flee Hyderabad. Meanwhile, Mujahid, 23, was pronounced dead at
the hospital.
Thousands of people collected outside the hospital and they asked for a
case to be filed against the police. Several different Hindutva
organizations came together to try and disrupt the funeral procession the
following day. The police used their special division - the Greyhound Task
Force - normally used to combat Naxalism to beat and tear gas the
processionists. The Greyhound Task Force forced their way into Mujahid's
house and attacked the family with sticks.
Meanwhile, the Maulana was transferred to a prison in Ahmedabad, where, it
is said, he was forced him to make a 'confession' . He appealed against it,
but the special POTA court denied the appeal and accepted the 'confession'
of Maulana produced by the Gujarat police. His first bail application took
four long months to be heard from the day of his judicial custody. A
judgment on the bail application took another year. The application was
rejected on the grounds that he was 'anti-American and pro Osama bin Laden'.
Another year passed and the high court upheld the POTA court's order. Six
months later, the Supreme Court asked for a swift trial, but rejected bail.
Two years have passed since the Supreme Court's order and yet nothing has
happened. The Maulana continues to languish in jail and is presently
seriously ill. He has only one kidney, a thyroid problem, and early signs of
arthritis, none of which has been taken into consideration during his time
in prison. His illnesses have worsened. He cannot walk or handle food that
he has to chew, but yet, despite several appeals, the authorities continue
to refuse to send him to hospital. In the meantime, the police have also
arrested two of his sons for allegedly conspiring to take revenge for his
arrest.
Scores of cases of innocent Muslims being deliberately targeted by agencies
of the state, in addition to Hindutva forces, abound across the country, and
the situation seems to be getting worse with every passing day. This is not
to say that none of the several blasts that have occurred in India in the
last several years could have been the handiwork of Muslims. Sympathisers of
some fringe radical Islamist outfits or Muslims seeking to take revenge for
the atrocities and large scale slaughter of their co-religionists, as in
Gujarat, might well have planned some of these, and Muslim leaders
themselves have rightly called for stern punishment for their perpetrators.
However, the mounting indiscriminate arrests, torture and detention of vast
numbers of innocent Muslim youth across the country in the name of
countering terrorism not only makes a complete mockery of our claims to
secularism and democracy but is a perfect recipe for making Muslim terrorism
a self-fulfilling prophecy. And, to make matters worse, at the same time as
the hounding of innocent Muslims continues, Hindu mobs are allowed to
operate free of any effective restraint, lionised as ardent 'nationalists'
as they continue to wreak murder, mayhem and naked terror on Muslims, and
now, as in Orissa and Karnataka, Christians. That, surely, is no way to
combat terrorism. Far from it, it can only further exacerbate the problem.
Note: The details of the above-mentioned cases have been procured from the
testimonies submitted to the jury of the People's Tribunal on the Atrocities
Committed Against Minorities in the Name of Fighting Terrorism organised by
Anhad and the Human Rights Law Network in Hyderabad, 22-24th August, 2008.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
*Thoughts on Terror*
*By Yoginder Sikand*
As in the case of many previous deadly blasts across India over the past
decade or so, there is much speculation about the real masterminds behind
the recent blasts in New Delhi. Depending essentially on who you
areâ€"which these days has largely come to mean for many people which
religious community one identifies withâ€"the monsters behind the carnage
could possibly be disgruntled Muslims or Islamist terrorists (for many
Hindus) or Hindutva militants (according to many Muslims).
In the wake of the Delhi blasts, the media and intelligence agencies have
been quick to blame the banned Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI)
or what is claimed to be its new avatar, the Indian Mujahideen, as behind
responsible for them. I have no doubt in my mind that the radical rhetoric
of the SIMI was inherently conducive to mindless militancy and that,
therefore, there is indeed a possibility of former SIMI members having been
behind some of the blasts that have rocked India in recent years. In its
vacuous call for a global caliphate and fiery appeals for armed jihad, the
SIMI sought to imitateâ€"lock, stock and barrelâ€"radical Islamists, such as
the Takfir wal Hijrah in Egypt, Hizb ut-Tahrir in Central Asia and
al-Mohajirun in England, all of which depart from centuries of classical
Islamic tradition and preach a form of hate-driven Islamism that is akin to
fascism and is viscerally hostile to other religions and their adherents.
For Muslims in India, living as an increasingly beleaguered minority, SIMI's
rhetoric was entirely counter-productive, inherently dangerous and an open
invitation for aggressive Hindu reaction and state repression. Which
explains why SIMI never received mass support among the Muslims of the
country, not even among the ulema or Islamic clerics, many of who considered
its political stance completely unwarranted even in Islamic terms. Some of
them even believed that the SIMI was outside the pale of Islam.
Based simply on its ideology, one could conclude that it is entirely
possible that some SIMI activists or sympathisers could have indeed been
behind some of the blasts that have occurred across the country in recent
years. Besides, it is also possible that some of these blasts could be the
handiwork of some other Muslims, incensed by the brutality of the state,
witnessed most starkly in the state-sponsored anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat,
as a way of seeking revenge.
This does not mean that these elements speak for the Indian Muslims as a
whole, however. To the contrary, Muslim leaders I have spoken to and whose
statements I have read (mainly in the Urdu press, because most other papers
simply ignore their voices) have repeatedly stressedâ€"and are also doing so
now, in the wake of the Delhi blastsâ€"that if, as is being alleged, SIMI
activists or some other Muslims were behind these, stern actionâ€"even
capital punishmentâ€"should be meted out to them, for bomb blasts in which
innocents die, they say, is not only against the Indian law, it is also in
complete violation of Islam. They readily quote the Quran as announcing that
so heinous is the sin of killing a single innocent individual that it is
akin to slaying the whole of humankind. If indeed some of the blasts were
the handiwork of Muslims, they argue, far from serving the cause of their
faith and their co-religionists, they have only made things much worse for
them, by heightening anti-Muslim prejudice, provoking indiscriminate arrests
of Muslim youth, strengthening the hands of those calling for tougher
anti-terrorist laws which, as in the case of the dreaded POTA, will probably
be used to further terrorise Muslims, and providing additional ammunition to
Hindutva forces in their anti-Muslim crusade. No Muslim, they argue, should
engage in such acts of terror, for not only would this be a crime according
to the country's laws and Quranic commandments, it would also be entirely
counter-productive from the Muslim point of view. That, based on my own
reading of the Muslim press and my interaction with my Muslim friends, seems
to be the generally prevailing Muslim opinion.
Just as some fringe radical Islamist outfit or Muslims incensed at the
slaughter of Muslims by Hindutva mobs, often in connivance with the police
and the state administration, might well be behind some of the bomb attacks,
so could Hindutva activists. In fact, such blasts and the mounting communal
divide that they engineer appear to eminently serve the political agenda of
Hindu fascist forces, whose entire politics is based on provoking
anti-Muslim hatred and violence. Although this has received little media
attention and even less serious action by the police and investigating
agencies, in recent years a number of Hindutva activists have been found to
have been involved in manufacturing bombs and planning terror attacks,
sometimes with the intention of camouflaging them in such a way as to make
them appear as the handiwork of Muslims. The intention behind this is clear:
to reinforce already widespread anti-Muslim hatred, manufacture a collective
terror psychosis among Hindus, present themselves as saviours of the Hindus
in the face of 'Islamic terrorism' and, thereby, capture the Hindu
vote-bank. And with crucial elections round the corner, could it be that
this tactic might be brought into play to supplement waves of organised
attacks on Muslims (and now Christians) in various parts of India in order
to garner Hindu votes?
Deadly enemies though they present themselves as, Hindu and Muslim
chauvinists desperately need each other. Without each other they are
incomplete, indeed unable to survive. That is what this series of blasts, as
well as the entire history of Hindu and Muslim communalism, clearly
suggests. So, going beyond the issue of tracking down the masterminds behind
specific cases of terrorism, which of course must be done in accordance with
the law, the larger issue of struggling against the tyranny of organised
religion and of the ideology of communalism, of which these attacks are
merely a symptom and a result, must not be lost sight of.
And part of that struggle must also entail honestly recognising how personal
religio-communal affiliations often blind people to the forces of terror at
work within the community they identify with. In the face of competing, but
entirely symbiotic, forms of terror under a religious garb, we all need to
draw our own personal lessons as well for how to respond to the challenge,
hopefully unburdened by one's communal identity. Mine, incidentally, is
borrowed from Baba Nanak, considered a Guru by his Hindu followers and a
Sufi Pir by his Muslim disciples, who discovered and then boldly announced:
'There is no Hindu, there is no Muslim'.
