After the storm by Subhradeep Chakravorty

'After the Storm' a documentary by Delhi-based filmmaker Subhradeep Chakravorty highlighting the plight of seven Muslim youngsters falsely implicated by police, was screened at the Deccan College of Engineering auditorium in Darussalam on Friday after the Hyderabad police refused to accord permission to screen it at a public venue.

Exposing the highhandedness of the police, the narrative resonates with tales of torture and inhuman treatment meted out to the victims in police custody even as family members speak of the emotional and financial burden on them. Every experience recounted left the audience with a sinking feeling about the police machinery.

As for Billah, an engineering student, he was taken into custody in 2008 for 'conspiring to spread terror' in the city.

"I was taken in by the police at gun-point when I was on the way to attend a friend's wedding. From the time I was arrested, the police tried to make me confess in the Mecca Masjid bomb blast case. They were not ready to believe me when I told them I had never gone to Mecca Masjid to offer prayers. It was not interrogation but orders to confess," Kaleem narrates in the film. Kaleem's parents were in the dark of his whereabouts until he was produced in court. "When I read the case diary, I came to know that I was accused of supplying SIM cards to the terrorists who carried out the blasts. They also accused my brother, who lives abroad, of handing me 10 kg RDX, which according to them was distributed by meto carry out the blast," he said. However the cases did not stand and Kaleem was acquitted in September 2008 after spending 18 months in prison.

The documentary concludes with each of the seven men voicing their thoughts about the secular fabric and police machinery and ruing how Muslims are picked up and subjected to torture under draconian laws.

A report in Times of India. Here

Team Anna member and Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan castigated Narendra Modi for communalizing the state of Gujarat through his propaganda campaigns. Mr. Bhushan was speaking after a documentary film “After the Storm” directed by noted human rights activist Shubradeep Chakravorty, to mark 10 years from the start of the Gujarat pogrom in 2002.

The documentary depicts the tragic victimization of seven Muslim men who were falsely implicated in terror incidents and continued to face discrimination and hardship long after they were acquitted. “Such documentaries put a human face to such stories and help create empathy in the public for such people,” said Mr. Bhushan.

Two circles Here.

The documentary opens with the story of a 49-year-old Mukhtar Ahmed who was taken into custody by the Central Bureau Of Investigation on 3 September 1993 under POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act). He was accused of being involved in the Chennai RSS regional headquarters blast case. By the time Ahmed was finally acquitted, he had spent a harrowing 14 years in jail and once out on bail is trying to extricate himself from the false charges. Eighteen-year-old Moutasim Billah was wallowing away time in front of his house in old Hyderabad on 5 March, 2008, when he was caught by the police. Though he was released six months later, the jail experience left a significant bearing on his temperament and the life of his family.

The stories that these men tell sound eerily similar — from the manner in which they were picked up and the delay to produce them in courts, to the way they were treated in jail. Most of the time, the date of arrest was falsely given and the delay in producing the accused in courts was to assess whether a successful case could be fabricated.

This similarity is not coincidental, human rights lawyer Prashant Bhushan points out, highlighting the increasing communalisation of the police force as the root cause of the problem. "This is a consistent pattern across the country. In the garb of terror investigations, the police have been systematically framing Muslim youth in terror cases. They fabricate evidence so as to implicate them. Whenever they failed to catch the real culprit, they'd pick up an innocent Muslim," says Bhushan.

He further blamed the media for operating hand in glove with the police. "Media organisations are embedded with the police and play a crucial role in further defaming the accused. Often journalists know that the evidence is fabricated but go ahead nonetheless. Media people have sold their conscience and ethics. A feasible solution to this problem is to make the police force accountable," he says.

A report in Sunday Guardian.Here 

Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan alleged that police across the country systematically frame Muslims in terror investigations when they can't find the culprits

Team Anna member and Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan yesterday claimed that police across the country were "communalised". "Police throughout the country are clearly communalised. Narendra Modi has communalised the entire state through his propaganda campaigns," said Bhushan, speaking after a documentary film show here to mark 10 years of communal riots in Gujarat.

A report in Mid Day. Here

A trailor of the film could be viewed here

‘Godse’s way of thinking is alive and influential’

‘Godse’s way of thinking is alive and influential’

The following is the full, unexpurgated text of the convocation address made by the Kannada literatteur Prof U.R. Anantha Murthy at the Jamia Milia Islamia on Thursday, 30 October 2008:

***

Dear Chancellor, Vice-chancellor, Deans of faculties, Teachers and Students,

When I say it is an honour for me to be the chief guest in this convocation of Jamia Milia Islamia, it is not a formal statement prefacing all such addresses. I mean it because in these difficult times for most of us, the vice-chancellor of this great University has shown the courage to act properly, and humanely that would have been the correct action by a head of an institution in normal times. But the hysterical attack on him by his critics prompts me to say that he has defended the ideals that our Constitution upholds and nothing more.

Nobody who is sane can defend the terrorists.

Let us not forget that Gandhiji was killed because he was perceived to be a friend of the Muslims, and an enemy of the Hindus while he strived against the violent actions of both Hindus and Muslims, and fasted to make his own disciples in power to give to Pakistan what was its due, legally.

The stridency with which some top political leaders speak now a days makes one feel that Nathuram Godse’s way of thinking is yet alive and influential in our country. We want not only the terrorists to be punished for their inhumanity, but the political and cultural malaise that gives succour to terrorism to end.

***

I studied in the great Maharaja’s college of Mysore University which had a British principal. This living legend who was opposed to the Quit India movement, did not allow the police to raid the College without his permission. That was the story handed down by generations of students. In his eyes, the “erring” students were under his care. He was of the opinion that all students were under the care of the head of the University, and s/he must play the role of a parent.

I cannot make this point better than my friend and fellow writer Mukul Kesavan:

“I have a son who, in less than two years, will go to university. If, god forbid, he finds himself in police remand for whatever reason (murder, armed robbery, menacing the faculty, fraud), I’d want his University to behave as if it were acting in my place, in loco parentis. I would expect the proctor of the University to liaise with the station house officer to make sure that such rights of visitation as he might have in that ghastly circumstance were given him, to hire a lawyer to see if he could be released on bail, and if the nature of the alleged offence didn’t allow that, to try to have him transferred to judicial custody.

“Police remand is a dreadful form of imprisonment in India; unlike judicial custody where the procedural restraints of prison manuals apply, the police in their station-house lockups have a free hand in working suspects over. Any university that washes its hands of its students the moment they are arrested by the police because it doesn’t want to be associated with notoriety or (as in this case) the taint of terrorism is a cringing and wretched institution undeserving of a citizen’s respect or a parent’s trust.”

Prof. Mushirul Hasan, as vice-chancellor, has stood by the traditions of this great University. The founding fathers of this institution were inspired not only by the anti-colonial Islamic activism of Khilafat, but some of them belonged to the politically radical section of Western educated Indian Muslim intelligentsia.

It is important for me that both Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi, who were skeptical of the European ideal of a strong, centralized nation-state, built on the notion of ‘one language, one religion, one race’, imagined India as a great civilization of multiple cultures and religions and yet united in an advaitic sense: they blessed this institution.

Let me quote again Mukul Kesavan to make clear what is at stake in our times now:

“When people, policemen and political parties buy into the narrative of a priori Muslim guilt, they run the risk of turning this remarkable republic into an ordinary, ugly, majoritarian State.”

I know how some of my Muslims friends have begun to feel these days. The media is largely responsible for this.

When any arrest is made for suspected terrorism, you invariably hear a Muslim name. Then you are told that the arrested have confessed.

Who will not confess under police torture?

I do not know if I would not confess to acts that I am not guilty of if I am subjected to physical and mental torture. This so-called “confession” is not valid evidence, however, in a court. By the time we learn that the arrested person is not guilty, the damage has been done.

It is an assault on our psyche to be informed everyday that a Muslim has been caught by the police or killed in an ‘encounter’. We never know whether the encounter could have been avoided. How can the dead speak of what really took place? There is a constitutional guarantee that every ‘encounter’ killing is homicide unless proved otherwise through an impartial and transparent enquiry.

Our nation-state does not seem to take this provision seriously for everything is okay if you can generate a mass hysteria.

In my state of Karnataka, I now hear everyday that the “master-mind” of the terror attacks has been caught. If we doubt the authenticity of the story we are considered unpatriotic and anti-national. This surely is the beginning of fascism.

As a citizen I want to ask this question: Why should the media give out names of all the arrested under suspicion before they are proved to be guilty? Some restraint is necessary in a civil society, for, even after they are cleared of their guilt, the damage is done. Many like me have begun to feel that we are living in a nightmarish Kafkaesque world.
The whole nation seems to be neurotic.

The rulers have to prove that they are efficient and therefore I have a suspicion that they randomly pick someone to create an illusion of safety among the citizens. (Any party in power or in opposition desiring to capture power has the next election in view.)

This feeling “safe and secure” is also a momentary illusion, for, tomorrow you hear again of some terrorist attack and of more Muslim names getting arrested. We are also shown on TV channels dangerous explosive material supposed to be in their possession for bomb making.

Do we believe in the much-hyped “Breaking News” of the TV channels? Yes and No. Feeling torn between belief and suspicion, even as one recognizes their need to sensationalize and closely compete for TRP ratings, is itself a mental harassment for common citizens like me.

Don’t we have children whom we want to return safely from school?

The harassed police are also under pressure from their nervous political bosses to find the guilty as quickly as they can. The inhuman terrorists, who abuse the word ‘Islam’, also know how poor the intelligence network in the country is; and the State seems to be serving their interest in arresting anybody who has a Muslim name, for, the terrorists hope to demoralize the rest of the Muslim community in the hope that they would join them, or at least sympathize with them. They carry such attacks in a Muslim country like Pakistan too. This is the story of powerful Bhasmasura, who tries to destroy his creator. This is true of the policy pursued by the USA for hegemony in the world; they have to now suffer for their karma.

The minorities are thus alienated from the mainstream of our nation.

If you are a Muslim you can hardly get a rented house in a decent middle-class locality in the IT city of Bangalore. On learning the name, they are politely told that the house has already been taken.

With the elections round the corner, Hindu rioters—a safe word for the Hindu communalists to mark their difference from Islamic fundamentalists—are attacking churches.

In a Kannada newspaper, one with the largest circulation and owned by a prominent Indian newspaper group, published a few days ago an irrational and abusive article on the evil designs of Christians to annihilate the Hindu religion, which had the full support of their leader Sonia Gandhi. The article was right in the front page, which continued in the inner pages. The excuse was that by publishing the article the issue of conversion had been opened for impartial debate. Some months ago, the same paper conducted an SMS campaign against me for criticizing a communally poisonous novel against Islam by this very author, who has now launched himself against the Christians.

I must however observe here that despite such psychological war, thousands of our fellow citizens go about living their lives and caring for their children and the old. The truly religious—among both Muslims and Hindus—are pious and compassionate. Otherwise there would have been utter chaos and anarchy in our country.

I feel it is also time all of us, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, did a serious exploration of what constitutes the fundamentals of Islam. This is necessary to understand the core of Islam, and, more importantly, to extricate Islam and Muslims all over the world from the clutches of religious bigots; protect it from misrepresentations of the Western media and all its lackeys; and to highlight the dynamism of Islam as religion and philosophy.

Great scholars like Maxime Rodinson, Edward Said, Mohammad Arakoun, Ziauddin Sardar, Alam Khundmiri, Maulana Wahiduddin Khan and activists like Asghar Ali Engineer have all done this. Only such an attempt would ever resituate (sic) Islam for all concerned without which ugly stereotypes and distortions and misrepresentations about Islam and Muslims cannot be confronted.

It is also equally significant to erase the unfortunate gap that exists now between well-meaning secularists and traditional believers, often dubbed as religious fanatics. In difficult times such as ours the conflicts/ tensions/ antagonism between genuine secularists and profoundly religious people have to be removed for the good of all. Our great crisis revolves round this aspect too. Otherwise, stereotypes and prejudices would make the situation almost impossible to deal with.

The Christians have at least the West to speak for them, but Indian Muslims have none. President Bush in a Freudian slip perhaps had declared a crusade against them with the support of feudally ruled Muslim states. Hindus like me who have come under the influence of Gandhi, Ramana, and Paramahamsa who in search of a spiritual realm went beyond any organized religion, now feel threatened. The nature of Hindu civilization, nurtured for more than 2,000 years by disbelievers, for instance like the Buddha, may also be destroyed by cynical supporters of a majoritarian state.

There is a cynical calculation, more so in some parties, less so in others, in dividing Indian people on communal lines for the sake of creating safe vote-banks. It is difficult to create a solid Hindu vote bank for they are divided on caste lines.

In the past, during the struggle for freedom and even earlier, there were many reformative movements to fight against casteist hegemony among the Hindus and unite them as a people.

One of the greatest of them, Sri Narayana Guru of Kerala got self-esteem and dignity for what was then a semi-untouchable community of toddy tappers. The Guru was a great advaitin himself. For him the untouchable Chandala who brought about a change of heart in the great Adi Shankara was not Shiva in disguise as the myth tells us, but literally a Chandala. Thus he was a “literalist” advaitin.

In Karnataka we had a great movement for social justice and unfettered search for spiritual truth in the 12th century. The great poet of that movement, Basava, thought of the dying human body as a temple of the living God which lasts, paradoxically, longer than the seeming solidity of the stone and mortar built temple. He also fought for social justice and equality and got a Brahman girl married to an untouchable. Gandhiji himself was a great reformer.

The paradox is this: now the unity of the Hindus is sought to make our state a majoritarian state. In this seeking of a united Hindu vote bank there is of course no spiritual purpose, although there is a show of festivals and pilgrimages (like the Datta Maala in Chikamagalur).

Last year, in another great institution for which Gandhiji was the founder and Chancellor until his death, the Gujerath Vidyapeeth, I spoke of a genuine search for a spiritual realm, beyond the boundaries of organized religion. This is about the three urges—I call them hungers of the soul following a great saint philosopher Simone Weil— that animated the Gandhian era of our country. They are, hunger for equality, hunger for the spiritual, and hunger for modernity. Writers like me all over the country were inspired by these urges.

Solution to the merely physical hunger for equality appears to be within our reach today. But equality as hunger of the soul is not easily satiated unless it gets coupled, as it does in some great sages of all times — with the other hunger, the spiritual hunger. Both these hungers have their origin in the feeling that all forms of life are sacred and our routine quotidian existence in the temporal world is boring unless it glows with a transcendental meaning.

Consumerist paradise can ultimately prove to be dull and tediously repetitive. Great writers of the West have shown how listless and nauseated the human person is in his civilization.

Therefore, when one is deeply animated by these two hungers, as if the two hungers were the same, one becomes profoundly impatient with the existing social system, the existing structures of religion as well as the developmental dreams unleashed by science and technology, for this world doesn’t belong to man alone.

This twin-hunger is what distinguishes our great saint poets of mediaeval times—Basava, Tukaram, Kabir and Akka Mahadevi. In our own times, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and B.R. Ambedkar—to take some examples at random – exemplify this hunger for equality as well as spiritual hunger. Spiritual hunger may be a better term than hunger for God because I can then include a fierce critic of organized religion like Ambedkar in it.

Who is not familiar with the person of Ambedkar in European clothes (symbolizing modernity) who fought an incessant battle for equality and dignity of the Dalits? But it is the same Ambedkar who in his later years embraced the compassionate Buddha. This was not in contradiction to his social commitment but as a continuation of his struggle on another timeless dimension.

There is a moving picture of him, although not so popular as the Ambedkar in western dress, in Buddhist robes and shaven head. Those who consider both these pictures of Ambedkar as intensely connected would understand how difficult, yet how beautiful, it is to connect the hunger for equality and human dignity which seeks ruthless political action in the temporal world outside, with spiritual hunger which seeks fulfillment in an inward silent struggle. This is what makes Gandhiji and Ambedkar complementary, despite their differences.

I am not able to say the same about the contradiction between the ideas of Veer Savarkar for a strong nation state, and Gandhiji’s dream of gram swaraj. They are irreconcilable, and we see enough proof of that in our troubled times in India.

The last point I wish to make is this: After such trauma and violence in Gujarat, the country seems to have forgotten the role played by Narendra Modi in making Gandhi’s Gujarat almost a nightmare for Muslims. He is now a hero for all those who believe in Development.

Every political party speaks of Development and the industrialists and multinationals know that a majoritarian state where dissent is curbed is the best site for development. No political party seems to speak of Gandhiji’s ideal of Sarvodaya, an economic policy that would even benefit the last poor person. The suicides of agriculturists are not taken seriously; their death does not affect the sensex.

Those of you who graduate today from this great institution should ponder over what we as citizens can do to combine development with the welfare of all. Development should disassociate itself from an unabashed consumption and its need of an authoritarian state where the majority can rule ruthlessly, suppressing every form of dissent.

Please don’t think of what I just said as a cliché ridden advice; the whole world is in an economic crisis following the American model of development and consumption; an ecological disaster is ahead of us arising from our greed-driven consumption; violence in our societies has never been effectively curbed by counter-violence.

Gandhiji’s faith in non-violence and truth being the same is not just an ideal; it is a practical and sensible path for not only individuals, as perceived conveniently by many of us, but for nation-states too.

Thank you for listening to my words spoken with a feeling of anxiety and personal urgency. Forgive me for not being able to give you a proper academic talk suiting the solemn occasion.
Source : Churumuri
Thank you Churumuri...!!!!

Torture in Hyderabad

M J Akber has launched a fortnightly. Its name is peculiar one. It is "covert". Only M J Akber could name such a peculiar names.

Anyhow as expected covert is different. When all other magazines are commercialised except one or two, the dawn of covert should be welcomed with open hands. India needs such bold magazines. India needs bold journalists such as MJ.

The following is an article by veteran journalist Seema Mustafa in covert.

I read it with tears flowing down my cheeks. The incidents could happen anywhere. anytime. This gloomy scenario makes covert more relevant.

No other magazine cared to probe the plight of innocent Muslims. Covert has done it. Hats off to Covert, MJ and Seema.

It was 3 September 2007. Abdul Rahim was just finishing dinner with his family when two persons in civilian clothes came and asked him to step out. They led him to an auto, and after a short journey pushed him into a car. Four others were there. He was blindfolded and taken to a police station.

They began interrogating him till the early hours of the morning. They wanted to know whether he had been involved in the twin blasts that had paralysed Hyderabad. They tied his hands, made him lie down and started hitting him on the soles of his feet with a belt. The pain was excruciating. They pulled his beard repeatedly, taking out tufts of hair. They asked him to give names of those who were with him in planning the bomb blasts in Hyderabad. They spoke filth against his religion and his family. The torture that carried on for three days in his case became secondary to the humiliation.

"I thought they were going to kill me, I thought they had killed the others. I was not allowed to sleep for three days and nights. Even now when I think of it I tremble with fear, I cannot sleep," Abdul Rahim says as his old father, a former government employee, cries quietly beside him. His parents cannot forget the week after. "No one told us where he was, whether he was dead or alive, we only got to know when a journalist came and told us that our boy was in jail," his father said. His mother remembers when she saw him, "His face was all swollen. He could not speak. I am a heart patient, I thought I would die."

Abdul was produced before the magistrate after three days. He was in jail for five months and ten days until he was released on bail.

His life is ruined. He was the only bread earner of the family. He drove a rented autorickshaw. No one is willing to hire him now. He was engaged to be married, but the girl's family backed out after the arrest. There is no money to pay the rent for the tiny two-room house. They are in deep debt. There is no furniture. There is a certain desolate look in his eyes, he is still in shock. He has to report before the courts twice a week. "It takes the entire day, I cannot even look for work, no one will allow me two days' off a week," he says quietly.

He has not been booked in the bomb blasts case. There is no evidence.

M

ohammad Shakeel is not at home. He does not want to meet us. He is too scared, under grave threat. His paralysed father is sitting in the tenement, eyes wide, registering fear as he looks at us quietly. Shakeel's mother, Ashabi speaks reluctantly. Two persons in civilian clothes picked up the boy. The family did not know for days where he was. Someone told them after a long time that he was in jail. He is out on bail now, without a job as no one wants to employ him. There is little food in the house for them to eat. What Ashabi did not tell us, even as tears trickled down her face, was that Shakeel was kept in police detention for 21 days without being produced before a magistrate. His hands were tied and he was hung from the ceiling. Heavy weights were placed on his knees, while hefty men pinned his shoulders down. He was given electric shocks on his temples, penis and chest. He fell unconscious repeatedly, but they would pull him out and after a short break resume the "treatment" again.

He has not been booked in the bomb blasts case. There is no evidence.

A

rshad Ali Khan's face has no expression. It is as if he is speaking about someone else, not about himself. But as he continues, his hands start trembling, and the horror of the days in detention is reflected in his eyes.

It was 2 September 2007. Two men banged on the door, came in and took him away. No one could protest. His father is paralysed and a heart patient. "Bahut ghabrahat ho rahi thi," was the only sentence he spoke to us. Arshad's mother Mehrunisa said they had no word of their son for two weeks or more. They heard he was in jail from another family, not from the police.

Arshad says they took him to a city office blindfolded, then to what is referred to by most of the boys as a "farmhouse" on the outskirts of Hyderabad. "In the day they would question me; at night they would drink and start beating me on the soles of my feet. They tied my hands and hung me for two to three minutes, I almost fainted with the pain. They would give electric shocks every day on different parts of my body. I became unconscious many times, and even later there were burn marks on my chest, thighs, near the ears. I could smell burning flesh. I heard screams from other boys in the building, they kept asking me to name others, to admit that I was involved," he says in a voice devoid of emotion, face deadpan except for the eyes. He was taken for narco tests, twice. He does not know the results, but guesses they could get no evidence from these.

He has not been booked in the bomb blasts case. There is no evidence.

M

aulana Abdul Aleem Islahi is a walking tragedy. Originally from Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh, he made Hyderabad his home decades ago. A learned man — his room is full of books — he is restrained in his dignity. There is an air of resignation around him, as he narrates the story but without a word of protest or acrimony.

It was 2004. His eldest son Mujahid had accompanied a well-known cleric of the locality — Maulana Nasiruddin who was on the watch-list of the Andhra and Gujarat police — to the police station. The Maulana was described as a bad element by the police — although the local people insist his only crime was his courage to protest against the atrocities committed by the police — and had been called to the police station. The Gujarat police was lying in wait and nabbed Nasiruddin. The young Islahi protested, and as the story in the streets of Hyderabad goes, one of the policemen took out his gun and shot the young man dead at point blank range. The police does not deny the death, but claims that Islahi tried to take the Maulana, along with others, out of the van. This is vehemently denied by all those aware of the incident, including another eyewitness who has been targeted by the police.

On 5 March 2008, Maulana Islahi was sitting in his little room from where he could see outside. His younger and only surviving son, an engineering student, Mohtasim was sitting with some friends outside. "They came in a car, they just picked him up, pushed him into the car and left. I ran out but they had disappeared. In the evening we went to the police station but they gave us no information," the Maulana said. It was several days later that they were told he was in jail by an acquaintance, but while his sisters have been to meet him, his father cannot bear it and has decided not to go. Huma, Mohtasim's sister, said she found him to be mentally distressed. He was tortured in police custody, as they repeatedly wanted him to confess to participating in the blasts. But what has become worse for a family that believed in educating their children and living a quiet and decent life, is that the police has been visiting the locality where they live and as Huma said, "They go to the families and say that Mohtasim has named you, and now everyone is very upset with us."

This was not so in the beginning, as the family was very popular. In fact, after news of Mohtasim's arrest broke, 30 women of the locality went to the police station to protest. They were lathicharged, arrested and detained for an entire night before they were produced before a magistrate the next morning and released. Two babies were also kept in detention with their mothers.

To protest is a crime. Ibrahim Ali Junaid had held a press conference along with others after the Mecca Masjid blast in Hyderabad where dozens had died in the attack, and at least six to seven persons had been killed by police firing. Hundreds of Muslim youth were detained. This placed him on the police watch list, although Junaid is a student of Unani medicine with a clean record.

On 3 September 2007, he had just returned from Delhi where he had gone to attend a university seminar. He went straight to the hostel to put his luggage. Two men, again in civilian clothes, emerged, tied his hands and pushed him into a car. "If you speak we will kill you," they said as they blindfolded him. After a two-hour drive they reached a "farmhouse" and started questioning him. He could hear the voices and screams of others. Late at night they stripped him and the torture began. "They started hitting me with a belt … and kept asking why I had held a press conference… They made me recite the Quran as they knew I was a Hafiz, and then hit me whenever I spoke. They beat me mercilessly at regular intervals and after a day started giving me electric shocks on my ears, temples, lips, private parts. I would become unconscious…" As Junaid spoke in a monotone, his mother, sitting beside him, shuddered. His father could barely contain his anger, but admitted his complete helplessness.

The police kept telling him to accept responsibility for the bomb blasts. "They pulled my legs wide open, placed weights on them, pressed down on my shoulders. I don't know how I survived those days," Junaid says. In six days there was blood in his urine, he was running temperature and "I knew if I died, they would put it down to an encounter". He was then taken before the magistrate, and put in jail from where he has just been released on bail after just over five months. "One night they took us somewhere, blindfolded, and took us out and said say your prayers, we were sure we were going to be killed that night…"

He has not been booked in the bomb blasts case. There is no evidence.

R

aeesuddin Khan's crime was that he was witness to the murder of Mujahid Islahi, Maulana Islahi's unfortunate son. On 31 August 2007 a large car with six persons came to his house. He was picked up, blindfolded and after about an hour's drive they reached a building. His was the same story — five days of continuous beating, electric shocks. "I gave them names of maybe 100 persons, all I could think of to get away from the pain, but they carried on. I thought all the other boys were dead, they made me believe that. One night they took me out blindfolded, they asked me to say my prayers, I could hear shots being fired, I thought I was next…"

His mother, a widow, Zaheera Begum said she was beside herself with worry. She had no idea where her son was. Friends informed her that he was in jail many days after he had been taken away. The hair from his beard had all been pulled out, he was passing blood in his urine, she says. He was taken for narco tests, and that has now left him with a permanent headache and allergies that are being treated. He is suffering from memory loss. He was also taken to Delhi by the CBI. "They were very nice, very polite, they took me there and dropped me back," he says. He looks haunted, his eyes are full of tears, more when another person tells us that his mother keeps very unwell now, has high blood sugar. "I am so scared," her voice trembles, "for both my sons. They can pick them up any day."

He has not been booked in the bomb blasts case. There is no evidence.

Iqbal Begum runs into the room breathless. "Where is he, have you found him?" she asks. Her eyes dull when she is told that she had been contacted for an interview, not because the contact person had found her son. She dissolves into tears, and takes out faded newspaper clippings as she tells her story. Her son Farhan had once been involved in some localised dispute over a mosque. The police had picked him up and kept him in custody for three days. He could not walk after the beatings, was put in jail for 15 days and then released on bail. A few days later, at 2 a.m. men came in civilian clothes when everyone was sleeping, and took Farhan away. He sold vegetables for a living. His father died a month after he was taken away. They have not seen the boy since.

T

here is terror in the localities targeted by the police. Sullen youth look at you and turn away. Families are reluctant to talk. After the twin blasts on 25 August 2007 the police rounded up over a hundred young men from the poor and predominantly Muslim localities of Hyderabad. A top police official admitted to "70". Many were interrogated and beaten in police custody, and released without ever being brought before a magistrate. There is no record of this number. About 30 were formally arrested by the police after illegal custody and torture, six or seven are still in jail and the others have been released on bail. They all spent over five months in prison. They remain fearful of being picked up again. "What will we do, they might kill my boy now," the families say as if in a chorus.

Civil rights activists in the city say that the accounts of torture under Rajashekhar Reddy's government in Andhra Pradesh rival those emerging from the prisons in Iraq. The governments at the Centre and the state, despite numerous petitions and fact-finding reports, have not responded. In fact the story itself would not have penetrated the walls of the old city had it not been for an Urdu newspaper, Daily Siasat. The managing editor of the newspaper, Zaheeruddin Ali Khan said that they were convinced that the accounts were completely true, and without intending it to be so, the story became a campaign that angered the administration but did not elicit any action. The Police Commissioner at the time, Balwinder Singh, now cooling his heels in Delhi as he was transferred to get out of the heat, even called the editors to convince them that the police had a case, but did not succeed as the evidence otherwise was overwhelming. The English media ignored the story.

Civil rights activists took up the issue. Nirmala Gopalakrishnan, K. Anuradha, Mohammad Afzal formed a fact finding committee on the arrests after the twin bomb blasts in Hyderabad on 25 August 2007. They found, and the other civil rights activists in Hyderabad confirmed, that any number of petitions had been sent to the President of India, to the Governor of Andhra Pradesh, to the Chief Minister and the state Home Minister, to the National Human Rights Commission, to the state and Central minority commissions and to Congress president Sonia Gandhi. The young men arrested had also sent a letter to the authorities — including the Prime Minister and Mrs Sonia Gandhi — recounting their tales of horror and seeking redressal. Every Constitutional door has been knocked at, but the state government has managed to kill the story and protect its back.

The state minority commission on its own decided to send a team to inquire into the reports. Chairperson Yusuf Qureshi appointed leading advocate L. Ravichander and forensic expert Dr M. Reddy who visited the jail and met the young people. Mrs Gopalakrishnan and Mr Chander both told Covert that they were absolutely horrified at what they heard and saw. The advocate said that he found that the boys were speaking the truth as he spoke to them individually and then met their families. "The accounts were the same, and there was a ring of truth to all that they told us, they had been tortured," he said. He saw marks on their bodies and was surprised to find that many of them had been sent for narco tests to Bangalore which he said "were illegal as the law does not permit you to give evidence against yourself". A top police officer of the state who was directly involved in the arrests, but did not want to be quoted, admitted that the issue was in the Supreme Court and the evidence of narco analysis was not admissible in court. He said that the tests were carried out to ascertain whether any of those arrested knew more than they had revealed.

The state minorities commission submitted a report confirming the torture. After that Mr Qureshi has been completely marginalised by the state government. His staff has been taken away, many have not received their salaries, and he is just sitting back until his term expires in March next year. The National Minorities Commission also sent a team and interviewed the boys. The report notes the violations, but plays down the role of the Congress government. The activists' fact finding committee found that every law had been violated by the state government and the police. Those arrested were not permitted to inform their family of their arrest, nor did the police inform their relatives within the stipulated 24 hours. They were not produced before the court or within the mandatory 24 hours of being picked up, with most reporting a delay of six to ten days. Many of those detained did not have charges booked against them, were kept in police custody and released after several days without being taken to court. Some of the detainees and suspects who have been released were reported as absconding by the police, with their families and friends pointing out to this correspondent that this was usually the precursor to an encounter death. Mohtasim Bilal, for instance, was reported absconding although he was with his family. The civil rights groups then arranged for him to be present at a press conference addressed by the well-known Ram Jethmalani in the city. It was only after this that the police arrested him, with his family pointing out that this was better than finding him dead one day.

Abdul Majid and Mohammad Shakeel were picked up on 31 August and 8 September 2007 respectively. The police announced their arrest only on 29 September at Kachiguda when they were produced in court. Abdul Majid continues to be in jail, and others who met him told the fact finding committee that he was subjected to terrible physical torture. His legs and hands were so swollen that the handcuffs could not be removed. He was vomiting blood. He was given electric shocks repeatedly, and one of the relatives of another family told Covert that the soles of his feet were literally hanging. He was punished for being the brother of a wanted youth, Shahid Bilal, who is reportedly absconding. Shakeel who was also tortured extensively is a friend of Majid. "I just can't believe how well the government has covered this up and has taken no action," Nirmala Gopalakrishnan said.

The police official insisted that they had identified "sleeper cells" and as a routine kept watch over the members. The boys who were arrested, he insisted, were members. Why did you not book them for the blasts? "We are looking for the RDX. Three kilograms were used in the blasts, we have to find the remaining. Once we find this we can get them all," he said. Why were they tortured? That is their story, he said with not a trace of remorse. Presently most of them have been booked under charges such as conspiring in a graveyard and distributing anti-state CDs. A civil rights activist, Latif Mohammad Khan, who has been very active in petitioning the authorities and getting the boys released on bail, has come on the police watch list. Latif knows this, and the police officer confirmed it. "You must have met this Latif, he is HUJI," he said. How do you know that? We have the evidence, was the expected reply. Civil rights activists recognise Latif as a conscientious man, pointing out that he has encouraged the boys to seek justice within the law — through the courts and petitions — and not outside it.

The activists point out that "there is urgent need to allay the sense of insecurity and fear that is growing in the Muslims, particularly the youth". Mr Chander said that the police action and the government's indifference were pushing the youth towards alienation. Meetings are being held by the different groups and concerned individuals to prevent this, but the Congress government remains indifferent and in a state of total denial.