By TwoCircles.net staff reporter,
Jaipur: Ironically, the man who set up a camp outside Sawai Man Singh hospital within hours after the May 13 serial blasts in the city to help victims’ relatives, has now been detained by police, saying he had prior knowledge of the blasts.
Rashid Hussain, who comes from Patna, is a network engineer in a BPO unit there. He was arrested earlier this week. He is one of several people, mostly from the Muslim community, who have been detained following the Jaipur bombings on the pretext of questioning. According to The Hindu daily, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) stormed the rented house of Rashid, 36, at Pratap Nagar locality and took him away for questioning. He is yet to return home. He has been working in the city since 2005 after graduating in electronic and communication engineering.
The SIT said Rashid had contacts with banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and had prior knowledge of the blasts that claimed 67 lives. But his father Shakir Hussain, who is Reader in Psychology at the Oriental College in Patna, has denied the police claim. He said his son had never been involved in any anti-social activity in the past and had an excellent academic record.
He was, however, attached with a local social organization Human Development Society. Secretary of the society Iftekhar Khan said that immediately after the blasts, Rashid was among the first to organise a camp outside Sawai Man Singh Hospital to help relatives of victims. Rajasthan Jamaat-e-Islami Hind president Er. Mohammed Salim has been quoted saying that the detention is illegal and SIT might subject him to torture to extract a confession.