A Most Difficult Freedom To Gain

Judges have been throwing out case after case against alleged SIMI activists because there is little evidence beyond confessions, reports AJIT SAHI

WHEN ABDUL Mubeen walked out of jail on August 6, 2008, his youngest daughter, Zainab, was too shy to speak with him as he reached home. She had been six months’ old when he was arrested in September 2000 and, therefore, had no memory of him. Mubeen had been arrested for his alleged role in one terrorism-related case, but was quickly implicated in three others. He has since been acquitted in two and was given bail in the third in 2006. It has taken eight long years for him to get bail in the fourth case.

Ironically, just four days after he was released last week, The Hindustan Times wrote a full-page story on SIMI on August 10, detailing Mubeen’s alleged role in terrorism. Among others, the newspaper identified him as “SIMI’s first bomber”. Mubeen was accused of carrying out a bombing in Agra in August 2000, which had killed four people. But in this very case, Mubeen was acquitted three-and-a-half years ago. “The judgements in my favour have nailed all these lies,” Mubeen told TEHELKA from his village, Baghawa, in Uttar Pradesh.

In the Agra case, the police had claimed that the bomb exploded after Mubeen had left it in a room, and that those killed were terror operatives, too. But once again, the only evidence against Mubeen was his alleged confession which he denied having made. Yet, the case dragged on for five years. He was finally acquitted in February 2005 after the judge refused to accept his confession as evidence. Within a month of his arrest, Mubeen had also been made an accused in an explosion which took place in Kanpur, where a bomb had allegedly gone off in a garbage dump. No one had died. It took nearly three years before he was acquitted in this case in April 2003. The reason — no evidence.

Mubeen is now hopeful of an honourable acquittal in the remaining cases, since in these, too, the only evidence against him is his alleged confession. One case relates to a bombing in 2000 in Lucknow near a government building called Sahkarita Bhavan. In this case, he secured bail in 2006 on the ground that the only evidence against him was his confession. The fourth case is of a train bombing near Barabanki in August 2000. In this case, it has taken him eight years to get bail.

SINCE SIMI’s banning in 2001, hundreds of its activists and supporters have been arrested across India and slapped with charges of sedition and unlawful activities such as waging war against the state. In due course, their criminal trials have wound their way at a snail’s pace. The government propaganda has ceaselessly stressed that SIMI activists were hardcore militants spread far and wide. But in a majority of cases, the so-called SIMI activists have been acquitted.

In fact, on July 12, 2008, the Maharashtra government’s top intelligence officer, PK Jain appeared before the SIMI tribunal (which later, on August 5, rejected the Centre’s ban on SIMI), with a list of 107 cases registered in that state against alleged SIMI activists since 2001. By his own list, in 45 of these cases, the accused were acquitted or simply discharged. In only two of the 107 cases were the accused convicted. The rest of the cases are still pending trial, proving to be a living hell for the accused who suffer these lengthy trials.

The story in other states is no different. Mohammad Ashraf, a grocer in Kerala’s Ernakulum district, was a member of SIMI until the ban. “I was on my way to a customer with his ration when the police stopped me,” Ashraf recalls of the evening of September 27, 2001, the day of the ban. He spent the night in the police lock-up and secured bail the next day. But Ashraf’s troubles were hardly over: over six years he spent a fortune fighting the case.

THE POLICE claimed that Ashraf was arrested while giving a speech in which he “criticised the Central government severely” and incited local Muslims to “create arson and protest the ban”. The police said Ashraf “asked the people to wage war against the government”. It was four years before Ashraf’s trial began and then it lasted two-and-a-half years. Acquitting him in April 2008, the judge wrote that the key witness said he never saw Ashraf give a speech. Another witness said he didn’t know if Ashraf was a SIMI member. Three other witnesses, including Ashraf’s landlord, debunked the prosecution’s claims.

A mild-mannered man with a flowing beard and a pleasant smile, Ashraf, 28, married shortly after the case was launched. He has since been blessed with two daughters and a son. “This was the only case against me ever,” Ashraf told TEHELKA in an interview at Thiruvananthapuram. Happy to be absolved, Ashraf is uneasy about getting embroiled again. “I don’t think about it, but, yes, they can always bring another false case against me.”

A harrowing case is that of Y Mohammad of Chennai. Mohammad, who converted as a teenager from Hinduism to Islam, was a member of SIMI until 2000 and left it when he got married. Police said he was arrested on September 28, 2001, for “criticising the Government of India” for banning SIMI. Mohammed, who works as a software programmer in an IT company, claimed he was arrested on the night of September 27. The defence said The Hindu of September 28 had reported his arrest. Chennai’s then police commissioner had at the time said that two persons had been arrested on the midnight of September 27 and 28, and the media had reported Mohammed was one of them.

A reporter from a Tamil daily newspaper was summoned as a witness. Some witnesses, including a hotel owner, Ganesan, who had said they saw police arrest Mohammed on September 28, 2001 changed their versions. Ganesan said he signed his statement under police pressure.

The Central government brought this case as evidence before the SIMI tribunal during its hearing in Chennai on June 14 this year. Just 11 days later, on June 25, the court acquitted Mohammed saying the police had not produced any document to show that he was linked with SIMI since it was banned or that he had indulged in any terrorist activities.

In fact, the courts have acquitted the accused — whose arrests had been widely publicised — in many prominent terrorism cases. Despite the acquittals, the Centre still cited the following cases before the SIMI tribunal, even though the chargesheets did not even allege that the accused were SIMI members:
• January 23, 2000 — Explosive found near India Gate
• January 26, 2000 — Explosives found near the ramparts of Red Fort
• April 10, 2001 — Explosive substance in tiffin carrier at North Block Gate 2
• May 9, 2001 — Bomb explosion at Army HQ in New Delhi; explosive substance found behind South Block
• May 20, 2001 — Bomb blast at CGO complex, grenade launcher recovered

Some of these cases were so ridiculous that even the judge could not stop himself from commenting about them. Shortly after SIMI was banned in 2001, Delhi Police arrested a Muslim named Hatif Iqbal and accused him of holding a seditious meeting in a graveyard. He was charged with the usual crimes: promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race, etc.; sedition; being a member of an unlawful assembly; inciting others to unlawful activities.

The lone witness later turned hostile in the court. After a trial of more than 18 months, Delhi judge Babu Lal threw out the case. In disgust, the judge said that given the severity of the charge levelled — Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code which concerns sedition; levelled in the past on the likes of Mahatma Gandhi — the least the police could have done was to have deputed an inspector as the investigating officer and not a sub-inspector.

Blasted : The remains of the BEST bus after the 2002 Ghatkopar blast Photo:Indian Express

One of the most shocking cases of the police failure to build a case against the accused relates to the bombing of a BEST bus (the local public transport) in Mumbai’s suburban district 26 CURRENT AFFAIRS TEHELKA 23 AUGUST 2008 23 AUGUST 2008 TEHELKA CURRENT AFFAIRS 27 of Ghatkopar on December 2, 2002. Four people had lost their lives in that bombing, which had received wide coverage. Seven people were arrested in that case, two of whom were deported to India from Dubai. One of these two, Mohammad Altaf, was named as a crucial link in the conspiracy, having arranged lodging for one of the bombers, with a Muslim doctor, Mateen, at the city’s JJ Hospital.

Once again, the holy grail of the police had been confessions, which were the only pillars supporting the prosecution’s case.

BUT ALTAF’s story was astounding. When he was brought before a magistrate, not only did he retract his earlier confession saying it was secured under pressure, he asked for a pen and paper and wrote in long hand a detailed statement of his own. To begin with, Altaf said he was never a member of SIMI; rather, he had been a member of the Students’ Islamic Organisation, the youth wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind that was an unequivocal rival to SIMI.

While he did accept arranging rooms for the alleged bomber with Dr Mateen, he said he had no clue that the person he had arranged the lodging for had terrorist ambitions. In any case, the trial court threw out the police case because all the confessions were identical and stereotypical. The state police has appealed against the order at the High Court.

That there have been scores of acquittals has made no difference to the Centre, which continues to insist that the accused in those cases should still be considered as terrorists and SIMI activists.

Look at this: in Para 10 of the Background Note issued with its notification of February 7, 2008 banning SIMI, the Central government wrote: “According to Intelligence Agencies, the bomb blast at Ghatkopar… clearly established close pan-Islamic linkages of ex-SIMI activists with the LeT (Lashkar-e-Tayaba) cadres in carrying out militant activities in the country”.

This is the same Ghatkopar blast mentioned above, yet the paragraph conveniently forgets to mention that the accused had been acquitted. But just a page later, in paragraph 13, the Background Note says: “In Maharashtra, the SIMI ansars (activists)… were instructed to exploit the acquittal of SIMI workers accused in the Ghatkopar bomb blast for regrouping SIMI members and mobilising support for the organisation.” So, effectively, gaining acquittals itself became a major handicap for the accused!

There have even been instances where the police in two different cities have tried to prosecute the same case against the same accused. It took a while before the judges caught on, and one of the two promptly threw out the case.

This happened in a case of 2001 in Nagpur, where a bomb was thrown at the house of a former employee of PTI news agency in Nagpur. Some 10 people were arrested in Maharashtra’s Jalgaon district, and were promptly booked on the basis of their confessions. Except for two accused, all others were discharged even before the trial could begin because the court said there was no evidence against the others.

Says Jawahar Raja, SIMI’s counsel who won the tribunal’s ruling: “It is difficult to fathom why the Centre would refer these cases before the SIMI tribunal even after the accused have been either acquitted or discharged.”

With inputs from PC Vinoj Kumar in Chennai