By Pervez Bari, Two Circles.net,
Bhopal: Popular Front of India chairman E. Abubacker has asked the Union Home Ministry and Intelligence Bureau to stop further targeting Students Islamic Movement of India, (SIMI).
It may be mentioned here that on Tuesday the tribunal headed by the Delhi High Court judge Justice Geeta Mittal, appointed as per the provisions in the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act has lifted the re-imposition of the ban on the organization. The verdict observed that the Central Home Department and Intelligence Bureau have failed to bring on record the facts on the basis of which the ban was re-imposed for a further two years on February 7, 2008.
Abubacker in a statement issued on Wednesday said the Central Government move to challenge the clean chit given to SIMI by the tribunal, before the revocation of the ban gets implemented, amounts to discrimination, prejudice and vengeance. He recalled that in the case of the earlier lifting of the ban imposed on Hindutva organizations following the destruction of Babri Masjid in 1992, by the designated tribunal, the Central Government simply implemented the revocation of their ban.
Abubacker demanded that hundreds of Muslim students and youth who had been rounded up and kept in jails for their alleged SIMI connections must be immediately released. It is needless to say that nothing can compensate for the sufferings inflicted upon the innocent people by detention and torture for the last seven years in the name of associating with SIMI, he added.
The present verdict has also exposed the disgraceful communal bias governing the Government Intelligence agencies. It is also a pointer towards a section of the media which carries baseless stories supplied by the police and intelligence sources, without caring for factual evidences, the statement said.
In this context, Chairman of Popular Front repeated the organization’s long standing demand to clean up the Intelligence agencies from communal bias in order to regain its lost confidence within the Muslim community and the Indian society at large. ([email protected])