Kunangudi Haniffa and seven others have joined a long list of Muslim Indians, mostly youth, who were framed under false, concocted charges, tortured and kept behind the bars for years together and eventually acquitted of all the charges. Haniffa and others were arrested for their ‘involvement’ in the series of blasts that rocked three trains originating from Chennai on December 6, 1997. Theirs is not the solitary case in which the prosecution failed rather miserably to prove the charges it dared to level against the innocent persons. In some other cases like those of twin blasts in Hyderabad, Mumbai terror attack, etc. Muslims have been acquitted on all counts by courts of law.
While this acquittal of Muslims gives us a sigh of relief that the concocted charges levelled against them ultimately proved having no legs to stand, it raises many questions for our security sector: what prompts the security personnel to name Muslim-looking outfits and arrest Muslims without any solid evidence soon after blasts rock a city? Why don’t they take the involvement of persons in a terror attack in its face value? Another disquieting question of equal magnitude is: why do our security personnel love to ignore the leads that point to the involvement of some Hindutva activists?
However some sign of good sense prevailing upon the law and order machinery has come to the fore. A Times of India (May 17) story, “Muslim youth in firing line” has to say that ‘some police officials are of the view that a soul searching should begin in the state force as to why the leads to this effect given way back were not investigated by the local authorities’. Some police officers also wonder why Muslim boys are still being hounded by the police despite the courts acquitting them on all counts of their involvement in the Makkah Masjid and twin blasts at Lumbini Park and Gokul Chat Bhandar. ‘Such behaviour raises serious questions as to whether the state police force is communally biased,’ a police officer has been quoted as saying.
‘We have to admit that the police personnel were communally biased – possibly without realising so – and mentally shut themselves to the possibility of Hindu(tva) organisations masterminding the blasts,’ another official was cited.
The suffering community feels that hounding the Muslim ‘suspects’ while ignoring the leads that have the potentiality of proving Hindutva hand in terror attacks is tantamount to double-dealing, to say the least. It also feels that this erroneous line adopted by our security personnel while dealing with terror cases is the natural corollary of anti-Muslim hate diabolically hatched and disseminated the country over by the Hindutva juggernaut for decades together, and as such it is against the plural ethos of our country as also against the greater interest of peace and stability of our nation.
Now with the names of activists belonging to Abhinav Bharat, Sanatan Sanstha and Sri Ram Sene being investigated in the various bomb blasts cases, we hope the investigating agencies will care to probe into all possible leads, book the real culprits and pave the way for innocents’ release. This will go a long way in serving the cause of truth and justice, for which we all should stand bold and undaunted.