By Md. Ali, TwoCircles.net,
Mumbai: What happened on September 1 in the Ansari Muhallah at Mograpadah area of Andheri has exposed the hollowness of the assurance of Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh on August 30, in a meeting with Muslim religious scholars, that his government won’t allow any kind of injustice to the Muslims in the state.
On the night of September 1, around 50-60 policemen in plain clothes entered the Ansari Muhallah in Andheri and started combing operation in the most brutal and inhuman way, says a report in the Urdu daily Inquilab.
Not only this they allegedly took an old religious scholar out of his house beating him badly. When a person tried to contact police, they stopped him.
For hours they interrogated them about Indian Mujahideen, the group which sent emails containing terror threat to the TV channels minutes before the Ahmadabad serial blasts.
Some of them got hold of three Muslim youths and started terrorizing them by asking about Indian Mujahideen. They allegedly forced Majid, an architect, Ayaz who is doing Diploma in computers and Ejaz who works in a call centre to open the website of Indian Mujahideen and its file, says the daily’s report.
Finally they couldn’t find any thing. They took the photos and mobile numbers of the three youths and instructed them to visit the Police Station whenever called.
The worst part of the whole affair was that the ATS personnel harassed and ill-treated an innocent religious scholar Mahmudul Hassan Qasmi. They beat him and humiliated him for no reason.
Both his father and grand father happen to be freedom fighters. They were jailed for months in Malta in the time of freedom movement.
TwoCircles.net talked to Sarfaraz Arzu, the Editor of Mumbai based Urdu daily Hindustan on this issue.
He pointed out that ATS was there on a tip off that a person named Touqir is present in the area.
When asked whether ATS manhandled people while conducting the combing operation, he said certainly it had shown the highhandedness which is typically associated with it.
They do mistreat and humiliate people. The way the ATS personnel conducted the whole “combing operation” resulted in terror and also anger among the local Muslims.
He informed that a delegation of the prominent citizens of the area which included the people who were terrorized by the ATS met with the ATS Chief Hemant Kerkare, and informed him of the highhandedness shown by the ATS people to them.
Mr. Kerkare told that the tip off sent to them was wrong. He excused and assured the delegation that it won’t happen again.
Mr. Arzu said if on the one hand the local Muslims appear to be angry for obvious reason, a section of Muslims has realized now that being a Muslim in India they have to put up with this.
He further informed that Mr. Kerkare told the delegation that from now on if the ATS conducts any combing operation it will take one senior and local member of the community to avoid such incidents.
Mr. Kerkare was informed by the members of the delegation about the many volunteers who work in the Muslim areas, who offered ATS their services whenever it conducts any combing operation.