Languishing in jail despite clean chit, prisoner writes to PM

A person picked up on charges of being a terrorist has written to prime minister Manmohan Singh seeking his intervention for relief, as he languished in jail even after CBI gave him a clean chit.
     
Irshad Ali, labelled as a terrrorist by Delhi Police's Special cell, has requested the prime minister to take necessary steps as the police accused by the CBI of falsely implicating him was allegedly threatening him inside the Tihar prison to withdraw the case.

In his three-page letter written in Urdu, Ali, who remains in custody despite getting a clean chit from CBI on November 11 last year, alleged that officials of Special Cell including the top brass were sending messages warning him of dire consequences if the case was not withdrawn.

Ali along with another person Mohammed Moarif Qamar were arrested by the Delhi Police with the help of an Intelligence Bureau official. However, in a strongly worded  report, the CBI said nothing adverse had been found against them and recommended action against at least three officials of Delhi Police -- Vinay Tyagi, Ravinder Tyagi and Subash Vats for implicating them wrongly.
     
In an emotional plea to the prime minister, Ali said "Na-insafi hi dehshatgardhi ko janam deti hai (injustice gives birth to terrorism)."

Ali said his letter that he had been working as an informer with the Special Cell and Intelligence Bureau for five years.

"However, I ran out of my luck when I sought renumeration for my work. I was picked and labelled as terrorist...my three children are not able to go to school. My old father and wife are suffering immensely," Ali said in the letter written from his cell in Jail Number three.

The CBI, in its closure report, alleged that the three officials of the anti-terror cell of Delhi Police "operation" be booked for lying under oath, creating false evidence among other serious offences, the sources said.
    
The agency also sought permission to carry on with the probe to ascertain from where the arms and ammunition, shown by police to have recovered from Qamar and Ali who have been languishing in jail since February 2006, have been procured.

The counsel for the duo, Sufian Siddiqui, moved a petition before the court saying, "There is nothing on record to show that they are the members of Al-Badr, a terrorist outfit, particularly when no connecting documents were recovered from them. It becomes all the more important in view of the fact that some Delhi Police and Intelligence Officers have stated that they are their informers."

"...Hon'ble Court may graciously be pleased to discharge the applicants in the light of the facts and circumstances submitted as expeditiously as possible as the two have been languishing in jail for more than three years," Siddiqui said in his plea moved before the court of additional sessions judge S K Gautam.

In its report, the CBI claimed Qamar and Ali, who were alleged to be militants of Al-Badr and arrested by Special Cell from Mubarak Chowk on G T Karnal Road in North Delhi in February 2006, were innocent.
    
The agency has alleged that the evidence gathered against the duo, who had been working as police informers, was framed by the officials, who were desperate to show results after the deadly blasts in Sarojini Nagar in October 2005.
    
The CBI investigation pointed out various loopholes in the chargesheet filed by Delhi Police against the two, which include the allegation that Qamar and Ali, "both militants of Al-Badar militant group", had gone to Jammu and Kashmir to receive arms, ammunition and explosives.

Though the police showed them as arrested, they were alighting from a Jammu and Kashmir State Road Transport Corporation Bus on February 9, 2006, and the officers did not make any attempt to record the statement of bus driver and conductor, the CBI said.

Neither any search was conducted by the police at the houses of the two accused nor any team of policemen visited Jammu and Kashmir and sought help from their counterparts there to prove their theory, it said.