With the killing of 38-year-old social activist Nadeem Saiyed, a big hurdle for city's underworld seems to have been cleared on Saturday. Nadeem, over the past couple of years, had emerged as a big obstacle for people involved in various illicit trades in Juhapura, the biggest Muslim ghetto in the state.
Nadeem's fate took a U-turn after becoming a key witness in the infamous Naroda Patiya massacre of 2002 riots. Nadeem who used to run a mobile repair shop at relief road received a mobile for repair. When he examined the cellphone details, he found that it belonged to one Ashok Sindhi, a prime accused in the massacre in which 95 people had been killed.
Nadeem gave the cellphone to AK Surolia, the then additional commissioner of police, crime branch. The call details in the phone corroborated with what IPS officer Rahul Sharma had produced. Eventually, Nadeem was made a key witness by the Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the massacre.
In July 2011, Nadeem was allegedly threatened by Mehboob Beg alias Senior, an accused in the Kalupur building collapse in which five people were killed, not to give statements to SIT. Later on, an FIR was lodged with Gujarat University police against Senior.
His becoming a key witness also changed his life. He became an informer for the cops. He shut his mobile shop and started filing RTI applications. He filed more than 150 RTI applications seeking information from municipal corporation and police department, among others.
By 2008, Nadeem had become an outspoken activist working for the betterment of his locality-Juhapura. He was attacked by eight people for his fight against the encroachments by vendors and butchers in Juhapura in which he was severely injured.
Soon, he became the voice of Juhapura and started exposing various criminal elements with his information to the police and even media. Thus, Nadeem emerged as the biggest obstacle for criminals in the area. Sources say that it was Nadeem who helped the cops in busting several attempts of cow slaughter.
In the case of recent incident in which a police vehicle was torched in Juhapura after police rescued over a dozen cows, the cops arrested around 10 people. But Nadeem told senior cops that they were innocent. He is said to have informed the officials that the actual culprits were Kalu Gardan aka Md Sharif and two others, who are now being alleged to have killed him.
Incidentally, the 38-year-old had expressed fear for his life to his father and police officials on several occasions in the last one month.
