By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,
Patna: All India Milli Council and Jamaat-e-Islami Hind have strongly condemned phone tapping and electronic surveillance by intelligence and security agencies in Muslim-dominated areas in Delhi, Lucknow and Hyderabad. The act of tapping and recording private conversation on mobiles and landlines is morally, ethically and constitutionally wrong, and thus must be condemned, they said.
English news weekly The Outlook has revealed in its latest issue dated 25th April that phone calls of some political leaders of different parties were tapped and taped by intelligence agencies including IB. The magazine also said that such eavesdropping was conducted in some Muslim-dominated areas also in Delhi like Jama Masjid and Jamia Nagar, and Lucknow and Hyderabad.
Reacting over phone tapping in Muslim areas, All India Milli Council General Secretary, Dr Manzoor Alam said the act is unconstitutional and was done to intimidate Muslims.
“The act is ethically, morally and constitutionally wrong. It is a way to intimidate people. The Government agencies have done it in Muslim areas just following Israeli measures in Palestine,” Dr Alam told TwoCircles.net on phone from New Delhi. “Indian Muslims are citizen of this country. To look at them from the eye of Israel will break the country,” he said and added: Muslims have sacrificed for the country whenever need arose. Their integrity must not be doubted.
Mujtaba Farooq, Secretary, Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, while condemning the phone tapping and electronic surveillance, said: Act of tapping and recording private conversation on mobiles and landlines from an accessible close distance using imported recording instruments and devices installed in moving vehicles is illegal, unconstitutional, unethical and also contrary to the social norms prevailing in a civilized society of the country.
“It is learnt that the vehicles are particularly targeting Muslim Concentrated Localities in major cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad. Such tapping amounts to Electronic Surveillance and it reflects Governments’ distrust of the Muslim community which is bound to aggravate alienation and community’s siege mentality,” he said.
He demanded the government to explain their position on the issue.
“Jamaat-e-Islami Hind is of the view and passionately demands that the UPA Government must clarify the deployment pattern immediately and accept the unanimous demand of the opposition for enquiry in this matter by Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC),” he said.