To be a Muslim today is to be encounterable: Experts

To be a Muslim in India today is to be ‘encounterable’ in the name of counter-terrorism exercise, feels Manisha Sethi, a Jamia Milia Islamia University lecturer. She was speaking at a national meet by NGO Anhad to discuss “what it means to be a Muslim in India today”

Sethi wondered how the National Human Rights Commission ignored glaring inconsistencies in the Delhi police’s account of the controversial Batla House encounter — in which two suspected terrorists were gunned down — “only because a ‘decorated’ encounter specialist lost his life in the gunbattle.”

Other speakers, among them the next of kin of several alleged terrorist masterminds, relatives of those killed in fake encounters, human rights activists and academicians, discussed in detail their experience of Muslim persecution in the name of terrorism.

Mussarat Jahan (younger sister of 19-year-old Ishrat Jahan, gunned down in a fake encounter in Gujarat in June 2004) asked if the police and courts could bring Ishrat back to life now that a probe had established that the encounter was fake and her sister not a Lashkar-e-Taiba operative.

Take the case of Khatoon Bibi, a widow from Godhra, who’s three children have been behind bars for the last eight years. “They were picked up from our home after the Sabarmati Express caught fire (in 2002). The police said ‘Bade Sahib’ wants to ask them a few questions. It’s been eight years since, and my children aren’t home yet,” she said. When her husband died a few months later, the police didn’t allow her sons to attend his funeral. On the 10th day, the youngest son was allowed home for rituals.

“Whenever I ask the cops what my sons have done, they abuse me. I meet my sons once in three months and they don’t know why they’ve been imprisoned,” she said.

It’s the same with Saleha Khatoon, sister of Zahid Sheikh, alleged mastermind of last year’s July 26 Ahmedabad blasts. “Zahid ran a mobile shop. One day, the police came asking for him when he wasn’t home. Zahid himself drove to the Crime Branch later. He never came back and after seven days we were told he had been taken for interrogation. We were not allowed to give him food or clothes.

Finally, after five days, when we met him he couldn’t even walk and was bruised all over. After keeping him in custody for almost a month, the cops claimed he had confessed to his role in the blast. Why would he drive to the police station if he was guilty?” Saleha asks.

Abu Zafar, brother of alleged terror mastermind Mufti Abu Bashir, bore similar testimony. A freelance journalist in Azamgarh, Zafar, who was detained after his brother’s arrest and later released, said, “After my detention, I wrote to the human rights commission several times, but never got a reply. In Sabarmati jail, Muslim prisoners are barred from receiving or sending letters in Urdu. They were even denied offering namaz on Eid.” 

A ‘jury’ comprising eminent lawyers, academicians and journalists deliberated on the issues and would soon come up with recommendations for the government to redress these concerns.