Even legitimate acts were dubbed unlawful and seditious. In March 2001, SIMI had called public protests across India against the burning of a copy of the Quran in Delhi. This was now cited as an unlawful act to justify the ban. “SIMI’s units gave wide publicity to the [Quran burning] issue through the Internet,” the Home Secretary said. Believe it or not, police across India have over the years repeatedly told courts that the use of the Internet by SIMI’s activists proved their anti-national and unlawful goals. (Some allegations are so absurd it is incredible that they launched criminal cases. They include: “the accused trained SIMI members in swimming and horse-riding” and “the accused stood at the door of his house and shouted anti- India slogans”. Maharashtra police says the SIMI accused want that state to secede from India.)
When the first two-year ban lapsed, LK Advani, who was by then Deputy Prime Minister, slapped another two-year ban on SIMI without a day’s break on September 27, 2003. A fresh notification — virtually identical to the first — was issued, replete with the same grave charges but once again offering no evidence. Midway through the ban, the NDA lost the 2004 Lok Sabha elections and the UPA came into power. The new Home Minister, Shivraj Patil, allowed the ban to lapse in September 2005. But inexplicably, four months later, on February 7, 2006, his ministry suddenly banned SIMI a third time. When that ran out, SIMI was banned a fourth time without a day’s break on February 7 this year. Once again, the notification was identical to that of 2006.
During the course of the four bans, hundreds of criminal cases were slapped on alleged SIMI activists across the country. Hundreds of Muslim men were arrested. A few were lucky to quickly get bail. A majority has spent a year, sometimes two, in jail on the flimsiest of evidence. Those who secured bail after repeated efforts often succeeded only because the police failed to file chargesheets within the legal deadline of 90 days from arrest (the deadline is 60 days in minor cases). Hundreds out on bail are still embroiled in cases dragging on for years; in many, trials haven’t even begun. Scores are still in jail, charged with crimes ranging from the absurd to the heinous. New cases are launched every now and then, and fresh arrests land more and more Muslims in jail. Many accused are repeatedly implicated in cases over the years, even as earlier cases are thrown out by the courts.
WHAT IS most amazing is that till date, police across India have failed to establish a single charge of sedition and terrorism against SIMI. In not one court have the police offered evidence or proof of links between SIMI and Pakistani and Bangladeshi terrorist organisations. Never has any link been established between SIMI and Osama bin Laden/Al Qaeda or Hamas or even with the armed separatism of Jammu and Kashmir or of Punjab, where such insurrection supposedly ended around 1991 — a decade before the government made the allegation against SIMI. No cases have ever been proved against SIMI on “engineering communal riots”, a categorical assertion in the first notification repeated with successive notifications. As for “seditious literature”, SIMI had published many magazines, posters, pamphlets over the nearly quarter century (1977-2001), when it had existed legitimately. No case was brought for two decades, until 1998, against any of its publications.
Before any trial, the judge examines the case for the prosecution and determines whether the material against the accused merits a trial, and if there isn’t, the accused is discharged. In many SIMI cases, this is exactly what happened: the judges found the charges so bogus they could not even sustain the framing of charges. In fact, many cases cited against SIMI are so sloppily crafted that the accused aren’t even accused of being SIMI members. In a majority of the few cases that have been decided, judges across India have either summarily dismissed the charges and discharged the accused, or acquitted them after the trial. The reason lies in the quality of evidence on offer. One would expect that with police claims of a watertight case against an outlawed “terror group”, the police would tender clinching documentary and/or circumstantial evidence. Surely, the sealed SIMI offices across the country offered a veritable telltale treasure to establish its links with terror networks. Surely, the police would find a paper trail such as bank accounts, handwritten letters, secret plans detailing contacts, false passports — the usual incriminating documents. Surely, the police would offer recordings of phone conversations and testimonies of neighbourhood witnesses.
