By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,
New Delhi: If you are a Muslim from Azamgarh, you are a ‘natural’ terror suspect, and thus most vulnerable to police highhandedness in Delhi and NCR. This is what happened with the friend of Amar Deep Singh last night in Noida, the twin city of the National Capital.
Amar Deep Singh and his Azamgarh friend Muhammad Ashhad were riding a bike yesterday evening near Sector 18 in Noida, with Ashhad as a pillion rider. The police stopped them at a roundabout and asked for the papers of the vehicle. Singh, a software engineer working with a company in Noida, told them he lived nearby and had come out to eat something. He had all papers at home. Then they asked about their names and places. After Singh, when Ashhad, who is doing software testing course in Noida, told the police his name and that he comes from Azamgarh the policemen told them they would have to come to police station. They took them to the police post of Sector 18 for further questioning. They interrogated the youths, who are friends from their days in an Agra institute from where they have done B. Tech, till late night. At 2 am the policemen told Singh to go home, but held up Ashhad and told Singh their senior police officers would interrogate him.
Till 3 pm today Ashhad was not released. Giving these details to TwoCircles.net Amar Deep Singh said that as he was driving the bike there was no question of holding Ashhad for not possessing the papers of the vehicle at that time. He has been held up and his interrogation is being prolonged, Singh said, just because he belongs to Azamgarh.
The policemen at the Sector 18 police post had told Singh last night that they were taking Ashhad to Sector 20 police station for further interrogation by senior officers. But when he approached the police station today, he did not find any trace of Ashhad there.
Till some time back both Singh and Ashhad were living together in Noida. For some time Ashhad was living with his another friend in the same city. As Singh and Ashhad are close friends, they often have dinner or lunch together.
While Noida SP office told TCN they had no knowledge of the case, SP himself did not pick calls on his cell phone.
Dr Tasleem Rahmani, president of Muslim Political Council of India, told this correspondent he was contacting senior officials to enquire about the case. Rahmani who is Azamgarh-based Ulema Council’s Lok Sabha candidate from Jaunpur, was instrumental in getting release of Council’s chief Maulana Amir Rashadi’s son Talha Amir in December last year. Talha was picked by Nagpur ATS on December 21 at Nagpur station while he was on board the Hyderabad-bound train to resume his office in the Andhra Pradesh capital. He was released on January 3.