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Police raids,
harassment, arrests, and torture have become the order of the day in the old
city of Hyderabad. Police officials suspect every Muslim as an ISI agent. A
Moulana who goes to give a traditional sermon in a Mosque is equated with a
religious fanatic who could be a threat to the country’s unity and integrity.
Only a few outside the old city know that the whole Muslim community here lives
as if in a perpetual concentration camp. The darkest secrets of the police
administration under the ‘secular’ regime of Chandrababu Naidu do not come out!
Reading of Quran has
become a crime. This act is treated as nothing less than ISI activity in the old
city. What type of religious freedom is this! A bunch of intelligence officers
watch out for all Quran reading sessions in the old city. For example, a study
circle on the Quran of 50 old and young people used to meet in the late
K.M.Subani’s house. The intelligence officers always followed all the 50
individuals. Some of them used to sit in the reading sessions to check what was
being preached. The women of the house were threatened that they should not let
their house out for this study circle. They were forced to shift the venue.
However, the present house-owner was once again threatened. Various management
committees of the Mosques in the old city too were threatened.
There are many
examples to cite. Moulana Md. Naseeruddin used to take special traditional
sermon sessions in the Masjid Saleema-Khatun, in Himayatnagar. The police
threatened the managing committee of the Masjid and stopped his sermons. Same
was the case with another Masjid, Shah Mauzzam. All the sermons were forcefully
stopped by the police in the famous Mosques in the old city, like the Jama
Masjid and Daru Shafa.
On the midnight of 18
August, 50 people were watching a videocassette on the demolition of the Babri
masjid in Saidabad. These people were the members of the
Darsgah-E-Jihad-O-Shahadath. The cassette they were watching was not any secret
one. It was a Newstrack Video Cassette watched by every democrat in the country.
However, in the case of the Saidabad watchers, the police raided the show and
arrested 14 people. Now they are languishing in the Moul Ali Central Prison.
Abdul Aziz and Nissar,
along with 10 more Muslim youth, were arrested a week ago. The police now want
all the names of all Muslims, old or young, man or woman, whom these two youth
met earlier. In another case, a gentleman, Muneeruddin Mujahid, was ordered by
the area DCP to go and meet him. Mr. Athar Qureshi, City President of the
Students Islamic Movement of India was arrested on 30th night at 12.30 am and
was taken to the Santosh Nagar police station. The CI, Rajeshwar Reddy, beat him
most brutally along with his four constables. Later on, he was released after
the Ganesh Immersion was over, but the police never told his family that his was
a preventive arrest! However, one wonders, why the leaders of a student
organization are arrested and beaten up most brutally without giving any reason.
Earlier, on 11th
August some students went to attend a student conference in Delhi organized by
SIMI. Athar Qureshi, being the SIMI President of the city led the team. While
they were attending the meeting in Delhi, back at home in the old city, Athar’s
younger brother, Akbar Qureshi, was illegally whisked away by the police on 15th
August from his house and detained illegally for 3 days and cruelly tortured.
Adding insult to injury, a big batch of police visited the hospital where their
mother works, and abused her in front of every one, at her work place.
They insulted her,
saying that she gave birth to anti-nationals. Now, the mother says that there
could be nothing more hurting than this.
These are only a few
incidents of harassment, illegal arrests and torture in custody meted out to the
Muslim in the old city. There are hundreds and thousands of such incidents from
every Mohalla of the Purana Shahar.
The old city reels
under the grip of fear when a Republic Day or Independence Day, or any Day of
‘national’ importance comes. A hunt for ISI agents starts on such ‘national’
days.
Every Muslim in the
old city is looked upon as an ISI agent, supposedly working for Pakistan.
Democrats from
Hyderabad city have strongly condemned the arrests of Moulana Md. Naseeruddin
(50), a local religious leader, Ahtar Qureshi Shahid (22), Hyderabad city
President of Student Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), and Yasir (19), its
General Secretary, on the night of August 30, 2000, from their houses.
There was a news item
in some sections of the press that they were already being implicated in ISI-related
cases which were foisted on some other people a week before.
Moulana Md.
Naseeruddins family members informed this team that the Hyderabad police
arrested him earlier on 6 December 2000 and while in custody he was given poison
by the local police. As a result, he became ill and his body suffers from pains.
His hair became stiff and he developed problems in his ears. It seems, according
to his family members, there was lead in the poison, which incapacitated many
functions of his body.
The Central
Government has announced recently that it is contemplating on banning the
Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). AIPRF condemns any such undemocratic
move. The Hindu Communal forces have been threatening the very existence of our
Muslim brethren in our country. Such a move will further increase the sense of
insecurity in the community.
We hope that these
arrests are not part of such sinister design as banning of SIMI. We also appeal
to all democratic minded and secular people and intellectuals to condemn the
arrests of the SIMI leaders and the Moulana.
G N
Saibaba, General secretary, All India Peoples Resistance Forum (AIPRF)
Leo
Augustine, Telangana Rastra Samithi
KVK
Subrahmaniam, APCLC
Dr.
Quyyam Khan, Convenor, Majlis Bachavo Tehrik
Giriyadav, President, Praja Party
D.Punna Rao, AIPRF
Bhaskar Banni, RPI
Sept.3, 2001
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