By TwoCircles.net Staff Correspondent,
Kochi: The CBI Special Court convicted the prime accused PV Hamsa in the controversial Chekannur Moulvi murder case. The other eight accused in the case were acquitted. The sentence for Hamsa will be made tomorrow. The 17-year old case had a long hearing of five years which ended last Wednesday.
The others accused and acquitted are PK Saifudheen, Hamsa, Muhammed Basheer, Muhammed Kutty, Kunhi Marakkar, Abdul Gafoor, Abdussalam and Usman Musliyar. CBI court judge S Vijayakumar made the verdict.
PKM Abdul Hassan, popularly known as Chekannur Moulvi, went missing on July 29, 1993. Moulvi had left his home in Malappuram with some people who fetched him for a religious speech. A complaint was registered with the Ponnani police. The investigation of the local police and the crime branch bore no fruits for four years. Then the case was handed over to the CBI in 1996. The chargesheet submitted by the CBI in 2002 reportedly says that PV Hamsa had fetched Moulvi for religious speech on the day of his missing and Moulvi was then murdered. Two persons were arrested in 2000 and the rest seven in 2005.
The CBI began its investigation under Chennai Unit Inspector Babu Gautham and was completed by Inspector VT Nandakumar. The chargesheet naming nine accused was submitted by CBI Chennai Unit Inspector VT Nandakumar at the Ernakulam Chief Judicial Magistrate Court on December 18, 2002. The chargesheet reportedly accused that a conspiracy was held at the Karanthur Markaz, centre of the Samastha Kerala Jam’iyathul Ulema (AP faction), under the leadership of the ninth accused Usman Musliyar. The accused carried out their mission in four groups. The first group fetched Moulvi from his home and the second group killed him on the way in the vehicle itself. The dead body was taken to Chuvanna Kunnu around 12.30 at night and buried there by the third group. The CBI team has not been able to discover any remains of the body even after a thorough examination in the Chuvanna Kunnu for days in 2000. So it is said that the fourth group removed the body from the place to somewhere else.
Pleas had reportedly been submitted at the High Court and the Supreme Court requesting to charge Kanthapuram AP Aboobaker Musliyar, founder-leader of the AP Sunni faction of the Samastha Kerala Jam’iyathul Ulema, also in the case, but were rejected. Kanthapuram Musliyar was named 10th accused in the case in 2005 but was acquitted for lack of evidence. Among the 40 witnesses, 14 had changed sides in between the trial. One who was abroad could not be presented in the court.
Chekannur Moulvi was a rebellious religious leader in Kerala whose ideas were in conflict with the traditional and accepted norms in the community. He was the founder and president of the Kuran Sunnath Society (KSS). Born in 1936 at Edappal in Malappuram district, Moulvi did his religious education from Darul Uloom at Vazhakkad in Malappuram and Baqiyathu Salihath in Vellore. He became a religious teacher and orator at the age of 24. He taught in three Arabic colleges where he tried to spread his own ideas and was thrown out of all the institutions. He used to write articles on Islam during his studentship itself. Later he published his own magazine ‘Nireekshanam’ (meaning ‘observation’). He formed the Kerala chapter of the ‘Islam and Modern Age Society’ through which he spread his ideas.
Moulvi argued that the noted Hadith reporter Abu Huraira was a Jew which made th ehadiths reported by him non-authentic. Only those hadiths having two sanads (reporting history) should be considered authentic. This resulted in considering a majority of the hadiths as non-authentic and so, importance went only to the Qur’an. The general view that the hadiths were the explanation of the Qur’an could not be accepted as per his views. He said that fasting (Saum) was not for working people but only for the rich so that they might know starvation. Daily prayers were only three times instead of the five times. Religion was only a private affair of each individual, and has got nothing to do with public life. There was no problem with (accepting and giving) interest in banks. He also made a call to amend the existing Sharia laws in the country. Moulvi published many books and made several speeches all over the state spreading his ideas.