By Mohammed Siddique, TwoCircles.net,
Hyderabad : The Hyderabad city police has released a list of 33 Muslim youth from the old city of Hyderabad who are missing for several years and many of them are believed to be based in different countries and working with the terrorist and fundamentalist organizations including Lashkar-e-Tayyeba. Relatives and human rights activists say that several of these disappearances could be by the police themselves.
The list, prepared by the special investigations team and the counter intelligence wing of the police ranges from the youth who were missing for last one and a half decade to several others who are untraceable since last year’s series of blasts in the city.
The police has come out with the list after at least two of the missing youth reappeared in the city with arms and ended up firing at the police injuring two head constables. The names of Viqaruddin Ahmad and his cousin Syed Amjad figure in the list. The police has already arrested Syed Amjad and was looking for Viqar in connection with Wednesday’s incident in Santoshnagar area of the old city.
Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad, photo by Anton de Young
The police sources said that the both Viqar and Amjad had gone missing soon after the blast in Mecca Masjid in May 2007. “When we learnt that Viqaruddin had returned, we tried to nab him to find out where he was till now. But he managed to escape after firing at the policemen. We have Amjad in custody and trying to find where he was during last one and a half years”, said a senior police official.
The list of the untraceable youth include Abdul Bari alias Abu Hamza from Nalgonda. He is on the list of wanted persons for the last 15 years and the police believes that from his base in Saudi Arabia Abdul Bari has been recruiting Hyderabadi youth for armed training in Pakistan and he has links with ISI as well as LeT. Similarly Farhatullah Ghouri alias Abu Sufian is also unaccounted for the last fifteen years and the police suspect that he too was an operative of LeT. Another interesting name on the list if 21 year old Shaikh Najiullah, who went missing in 2005 from Saudi Arabia. His grandfather and founder of fundamentalist organization Darasgahe Jehado Shahadat Shaikh Mahboob Ali has also admitted that Najiullah was taken away by ISI agents to Pakistan for armed training.
What has made the police worried about these youth is that their families have also not lodge any missing complaint with the police. It has made the police suspect that there was something fishy about their where about and what they were upto.
The names in the list include 40 year old Zakiur Rahman, (missing for 15 years believed to be LeT activist based in Saudi Arabia), Mohammed Abdul Aziz (missing since 2004, believed to be activist of LeT), Muqtadar (missing 1993) Mohammed Minhajuddin alias Faseehuddin, Abdullah Masood and Osman Bin Sayeed (all missing since 1998), Mohammed Abdul Ahad brother of Mohammed Shahed Bilal (missing since 2004 and believed to be in Gulf), Syed Aqeel (missing since 2002), Aslam Khan (missing since 2003), Mohammed Afroz and Syed Abdul Rahman Hussain alias Bada Sajid (since 1998), Mohammed Sajid alias Chota Sajid (2008), Afsar alias Mansoor (since 1998), M A Qayoom (since 2004), Feroze Khan alias Baba (witness of Task Force office blast since 2005) Syed Nadeemullah Hussain alias Farhan (since 2006), Mohammed Nazeer Ahmad, Siddique Bin Osman, Mohammed Hadi alias Zahed (since 2002).
The list once included the name of Mohammed Shahed alias Shaed Bilal and police has suspected his hand in several acts of terror and described him as a key operative of LeT. But his name was deleted after the reports that he along with his another brother Abdul Samad was killed in Karachi in a shootout in August last year, a few days after the twin blasts in Hyderabad. However the name of his brother Abdul Ahad figures in the list.
The police sources said that they have already provided the list of these untraceable youth to the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Research and Analysis Wing, India’s external spy agency to take necessary measures for their extradition and to arrest them.
Police officials say that while most of these youth were in other countries including Pakistan and Bangladesh, some could have settled in other states by getting jobs there.
Many of the youth in the list have been described as the members of different gangs named after their leaders. They include the gang of Mohammed Faseehuddin, who was killed by police in 1993, Saleem Junaid who was arrested and Shahed Bilal gang.
While the families and the parents of most of the youth listed as missing were unwilling to talk fearing for the safety of their wards, the AP Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee Secretary Lateef Mohammed Khan said that there were various reasons behind the cases of these youth. “I don’t think all of these youth have gone missing. Many of them could be cases of disappearance at the hands of the police”, Lateef Khan said.
Lateef Mohammed Khan
Elaborating on this point he said that the Hyderabad police was running secret torture cells at private farm houses in suburbs of Hyderabad to keep the youth in illegal custody. “These youth are being used as fodder cannon to be killed in fake encounter whenever the situation demands”, he said.
Giving an example he said a youth Ghulam Yazadani who was missing for a long time from his home in Hyderabad was killed in a fake encounter by Delhi police soon after the blasts in Varanasi. “A senior police officer of Hyderabad Rajiv Trivedi had forced his parents to make a public appeal to Yazdani to return home and surrender. Later the same Hyderabad police handed him over secretly to Delhi police and he was killed in fake encounter”, Lateef Khan said.
“This is all Israeli tactics which our police is learning through training programs in Israel”, he alleged.
“In some cases the parents of the youth told us that their wards were not missing and they were working abroad”, Lateef Khan said. “But even in case where the youth have gone missing, it is due to the police torture, harassment and their branding as terrorists and militants. Police should be held responsible for this”.
But hesitantly Lateef Khan also admits that the campaign of hatred by Hindutva forces since the demolition of Babri Masjid has pushed some Muslim youth on the path of militancy and they were exploited by some anti social elements. “because there was no leadership of Muslims to guide them in the crisis hour after the demolition of Babri Masjid, some of these youth lost their faith in democracy and became militants”, he said. He counted Ghulam Yazdani and Mohammed Shahed among such youth.
At least parent of two youth had approached the Andhra Pradesh High Court with habeas corpus petition alleging their wards were in the police custody. When Tahera Begum, the mother of Feroze Khan had filed her petition a division bench of the High Court had summoned the director general of the state police to appear before it. A special police team was constituted and a reward of Rs 50,000 was announced but the boy remained untraceable. The police denied he was in their custody and suspected that he might have crossed border in to Bangladesh as he was a witness in the bomb blast in Task Force Office. Feroze had gone missing in March 2005 after the police questioned him about the attack on Task Force office and released him.
In case of Abdul Ahad, another missing case, his father Abdul Wahed, a retired teacher maintained that he was working in Dubai. He had said that same thing about his other son Abdul Samad who along with another brother Abdul Shahed allegedly died in a shootout in Karachi. Police said Shahed was working for ISI and LeT.
Lateef Khan says that when such youth leave Hyderabad, they are not stopped by the police but when they return home from abroad they are booked in one case or the other. “The police deliberately keeps the vague cases of criminal conspiracy open ended to book any number of people”, he says. He pointed out that in the criminal conspiracy case number 198/2007 initially only 10 youth were booked. Now the number of the accused has gone upto 68.
“It is these acts of the police which is forcing the youth to flee their homes”, he said.
It looks that Hyderabad, conspicuous at the national level as a major center of Muslims, has become the target of various forces at the same time. While some youth have obviously taken the path of violence, crossed the borders to attend the training camps, many others are paying the price for the crimes they have not committed.