Unheard & Unspoken: Terror stories from Madhya Pradesh: Part 4
By Mohd. Ismail Khan, TwoCircles.net
Madhya Pradesh is famous for its notorious day-light dacoities, especially its rural banks were soft and easy target for dacoits from north and central India. But recently two years back a new theory has started popping up in the news circles in MP. MP Police has now started booking many Muslim youths in bank dacoity cases alleging them to be the members of Student Islamic movement of India (SIMI) or Indian Mujahideen (IM).
Police put up a theory that SIMI and IM are running out of funds so its members are now looting banks to fund their activities. “They switched to bank dacoity to finance their activities as they were not getting enough funds through traditional ‘Zakat’ (charity contributions) for funding their plans like arranging training camps, weapons, explosives. So far, the arrested activists have revealed their involvement in five bank dacoities including two at Dewas and one each at Itarsi, Piplia Mandi and Jaora,” said MP ATS IG Vipin Maheshwari in June 2011, after arresting eight Muslim youths from Bhopal and Jabalpur and alleged that all the arrested persons are members of SIMI and IM.
But one fail to understand that how ATS came to the conclusion of joint SIMI and IM operation, because it was the same ATS which propagated the theory that IM was formed by a breakaway faction of SIMI due to ideological differences. Immediately after the arrest of those eight youths police officials started giving statements to the media, “They were either conspiring to kill an important person or planning a terror strike,” said S.K. Raut the then DGP. DGP claimed this arrest was part of the Operation Vijay by MP ATS as a crackdown on SIMI and IM activities. Police even claimed of recovering five pistols and 23 live rounds besides Rs 2 lakh, forged documents and SIMI literature from their custody. For whole week there was no word from MP police or ATS that they were involved in dacoity cases, but suddenly those eight guys arrested in the name of banned organization were declared noted dacoits and booked in robbery cases, and in this way the big robberies in the state from last few years were solved.
If this was not enough to create a doubt regarding ATS theory, another controversial or rather illogical turn in their case, those eight youths was booked in many different bank dacoity cases by MP ATS one among them was the charge of looting nearly 13 Kg of gold worth Rs 2.6 crore from Manappuram Gold Finance Company’s Hanumanganj office in Bhopal on Aug 2010. Police even showed 6 KG of gold allegedly recovered from them one week after their arrest.
The paradox of this case is that six months after the loot a dacoit group of Bihar led by noted dacoit Shailendra Singh claimed responsibility, Bhopal police even arrested two members of that gang and charge sheet was filed against them, not only this they were even sentenced to three years rigorous imprisonment by the local court in that same Manappuram Gold Dacoity Case.
This case has resulted in serious confrontation between MP police and ATS, while MP ATS framed charges against them in bank dacoity cases including Manappuram Gold Dacoity Case and ATS IG Vipin Maheshwari also declared them as dacoits. On the other hand MP police was caught in an embarrassing situation when Indore range IG Sanjay Rana went on the record to say that “it was not clear yet whether any arrested members of the banned organization were involved in the bank robberies that had taken place in this range last year.”
One arrest but six others are affected too. Mohammad Sajid’s family struggling to survive in Ujjain. [TCN Photo]
Mohammad Sajid a resident of Ujjain is one among eight Muslim youths who were arrested by MP ATS from Jabalpur and Bhopal in June 2011. He is charged in Piplia Mandi Dacoity Case in Mandsaur district, and he was shown arrested from a rented place in a building in Ahmednagar Mohalla near Raja Chowk in Jabalpur with three other SIMI or IM members. First MP ATS and media declared him as foot worker who was propagating SIMIs ideology among youngsters and then suddenly he became an ideologue of IM given responsibility to raise funds for their operations. But according to his family he has no links either with SIMI or IM or any other organization.
25 year old Sajid comes from a very poor economic background, he was a crockery worker. His father is handicapped, and has three unmarried sisters, a mother and one ailing grandmother to take care of; he was the sole bread earner of the family.
His mother Shahzad Bi told us that his son did not have any criminal record before his arrest. She said, “My son was a responsible person, he use to mind with his own business because he was the sole bread earner of the family and had lot of responsibility on his shoulders.”
On the charges from MP ATS she said, “ATS is putting false cases against him, he went to Bhopal in that year to look for some employment there, we suddenly lost contact with him, after few days he was shown arrested from Jabalpur railway station. When I went to see him in Jabalpur prison, he was in a bad condition; he told me that ATS physically and mentally tortured him.”
She also said to us that police have become a frequent visitor to their house after his sons’ arrest, “police is keeping us in strict surveillance in our house we are just five women and a handicapped man what harm we can do to anyone?. Police raided our houses after the arrest of Sajid and ruined whole house they even misbehaved with my young daughters, they seized video cassette of the marriage of my elder daughter, when I ask them why are they taking video cassette of the marriage they replied it is a ‘SIMI material’. After that raid our landlord asked us to leave his house, everyone in locality is looking us with suspicion.”
Speaking on difficulties faced by them after the arrest of their sole bread earner she said, “My husband is disabled in his right leg, but even as we speak he is out there on the roads working as a bicycle repair mechanic to make some living. My mother in law is ill but we don’t have money to buy her medicines. Tell me a man who has so many people to take care of, and with so many responsibilities to fulfill could do such kind of stupid things in the name of religion.”
His aged and handicapped father Mohammad Sadiq arrived at his home leaving his work as soon as he got to know that someone from media wants to know about his son. He was more than willing to talk about his son, he said, “My son is innocent he is being branded as dacoit and terrorist even before the trial has started, I want to tell real facts about my son’s case but no one gives us chance to speak, whatever is published in newspapers is accepted as truth. I talked to my son in jail and he said forget about looting banks he has never stolen anything from any one, and I believe him because he would never get involved in such kind of things keeping in mind difficulties which we are facing right now.”
Both father and mother complained about slow trial in his case. They said there was hardly any hearing in this whole year. They are hopeful that their son will get acquitted, but they also fear that he will lose precious days of his life and their mounting difficulties will continue before he will be declared innocent by the court.