{"id":111836,"date":"2008-08-16T14:06:57","date_gmt":"2008-08-16T08:36:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tehelka.com\/?p=111836"},"modified":"2008-08-16T14:06:57","modified_gmt":"2008-08-16T08:36:57","slug":"they-just-want-muslim-boys-to-always-be-in-jail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/they-just-want-muslim-boys-to-always-be-in-jail\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018They just want Muslim boys to always be in jail\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
Photo:<\/strong> Global News Network<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nAN ENGINEERING<\/strong> student forced to give up studies because of cases of sedition and terrorism against him, 22-year-old Moutasim Billah of Hyderabad would do a lawyer proud with the way he reels out sections of the Indian Penal Code. Sadly, Billah is familiar with these sections only because he has suffered them for seven years. Billah was arrested on March 5, 2008, after his name came up in alleged confessions of other young Muslims randomly arrested and tortured with electric shocks by the police during investigations of last year\u2019s bomb blasts in Hyderabad. Nine people were killed in the May 2007 blast outside a mosque called Mecca Masjid near the Charminar. Forty more were killed in two simultaneous blasts at a snack shop and in a park in August.<\/span>
\nWhen the police found no grounds to implicate Billah in the two blasts, they slapped a patently bogus case on him, saying he and the other men secretly met at a cemetery to hatch a terrorist conspiracy and incite Hindu-Muslim violence. The police claim to have raided the meeting and arrested seven persons, but say Billah absconded \u2014 until his arrest in March. He was in prison for 90 days until the High Court gave him bail. The only evidence cited against him were some \u201cinflammatory\u201d CDs allegedly found in the cemetry.<\/span>
\n\u201cThe police want Muslims boys to always stay in jail on some pretext or the other,\u201d Billah told TEHELKA in an interview on June 12, 2008 at his home in Hyderabad, just hours after he was released. Billah\u2019s narrative is a good primer on how the Indian police trap innocent people and makes their lives a living hell. His story began when as a 15- year-old, Billah joined demonstrations in Hyderabad called by local Muslims in 2001 to protest US President George Bush\u2019s decision to invade Afghanistan. For some reason, police decided this was a crime in India. They registered cases against scores of protestors, including Billah. Despite there being no independent witnesses or evidence, the case has dragged on for seven years, during which Billah has attended more than 50 hearings. In 2002, he joined another protest, bringing on another FIR that is still a live grenade.<\/span>
\nIn 2004, a tragic event occurred. Billah was its victim, but the police made him an accused and slapped serious charges on him. Readers will recall that last week TEHELKA exposed the police lies against Maulana Nasiruddin of Hyderabad and two of his sons, all of whom are in jails in different states. Billah\u2019s family and Maulana Nasiruddin are neighbours in the Muslim neighbourhood of Saidabad in Hyderabad. To recap: in October 2004, Nasiruddin went to the local police station for a routine attendance in an earlier case when policemen from Gujarat waiting there arrested him on a charge of conspiracy to enact terror in that state, including the murder of its former home minister, Haren Pandya.<\/span>
\nWhen a few Muslims who had accompanied Nasiruddin to the police station protested, a Gujarat police officer fired at them, instantly killing one protestor. That protestor was Billah\u2019s older and only brother. Forget about getting justice for his brother\u2019s death, Billah was made an accused in the criminal case filed against the protestors, charging them with the very serious crime of obstructing police officers from doing their duty: in this case, taking custody of Nasiruddin. The protestors forced the police to file a case against the Gujarat officer. Billah is listed as an eyewitness in that case.<\/span>
\nTEHELKA\u2019s investigation reveals that across India, police repeatedly and deliberately list some accused as \u201cabsconding\u201d, so that they can be easily picked up when the heat is on the police for some case. That\u2019s what was said about Billah in myriad cases since 2001. But Billah was no absconder. Until 2004, he was studying BE in civil engineering at the local Deccan Engineering College, when he dropped out in the third year. He regularly participated in community events. He regularly used a mobile phone, the recordings of which could easily prove his whereabouts.<\/span>
\nANOTHER TACTIC<\/strong> the police regularly use against SIMI activists is to implicate them in older cases with retrospective effect. The day after Maulana Nasiruddin\u2019s arrest in 2004, angry Muslims had pelted stones at the police as Billah\u2019s brother\u2019s coffin had wound its way to the cemetery. The police had promptly registered another case. Billah wasn\u2019t an accused in that case for over three years. But after his arrest on March 5, 2008, police included his name in that case as well.<\/span>
\nWhen he was produced in court, Billah told the judge that he had made no confessions to the police and was forced to sign a blank paper by them. But his prospects look grim: his \u201cconfession\u201d submitted by the police says he was networked with the alleged SIMI leader, Safdar Nagori, who was dramatically arrested in Indore on March 26, 2008 and is the police\u2019s latest fall guy, vilified in the media as a big terror mastermind though his trial is yet to even begin.<\/span>
\nCuriously, none of the police cases against Billah ever claimed he is a SIMI member, saying only that he was the brother of a SIMI member (which too both the family and SIMI deny), or that he was a \u201csympathiser\u201d of SIMI or \u201cassociated\u201d with SIMI members. But one of Hyderabad\u2019s senior IPS officers, Amit Garg, categorically asserted before the tribunal (assessing the ban) that Billah was a SIMI member. This reflects either Garg\u2019s prejudice or a deliberate attempt on his part to mislead the tribunal. As the point person of the Andhra Pradesh police for all SIMI cases before the tribunal, Garg swore an oath that he had no, repeat no, personal knowledge of the cases and was deposing entirely from documents given him by various investigating officers. Yet, none of the documents except his says Billah is a SIMI member.<\/span>
\nAll the allegations against Billah seem to flow from prejudice. The police have been smarting since 2006 when Billah mocked them with his bold decision to assist SIMI\u2019s legal team in hearings by the previous tribunal. \u201cPolicemen came to me and said, \u2018Why the hell have you come here if you are not with SIMI?\u2019\u201d Billah recalls. \u201cThey said I was making a terrible mistake.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>\u2022<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Moutasim Billah has been a police scapegoat for seven years, even though they acknowledge they have nothing on him, Reports Ajit Sahi<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":111858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[56],"tags":[7004],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111836"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tehelka.com\/rest-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}