In a scathing editorial, the Etemaad Urdu daily on July 20 lashed out at the apathy of the government and the judiciary in spurring the investigations of the Makkah Masjid bomb blasts. Two months into the tragic event, none of the agencies – not the city police force, nor the CBI, nor the Special Inquiry Cell (SIC) or the Judicial Commission set up especially for investigating the blasts that rocked Hyderabad in May 2007 – has made any headway in uncovering the true culprits behind the ghastly act. The editorial of the daily expressed outrage that all that the government has been able to do so far is the arrest of a few young men – and young Muslim men at that – and has confined investigations only to the “confessions” of these youth, without troubling itself with any further probes. After the city police’s “discovery” of the culprit and his affiliation with the Lashkar, the SIC has come up with an equally preposterous story of Bangladeshi spies being responsible for the blasts.
The sanctity of the Muslims’ place of worship has been ripped apart, worshippers lost their lives, and to top it the police opened live fire on the crowd. Yet the judicial commission set up on June 3 has still not started investigating the reasons behind the unprovoked firing. Retd. Justice Bhaskar Rao, who is heading this commission, has stated that he has not been provided with either staff or an office or any other facilities to start the already delayed work, thus clearly projecting the half-hearted interest of the government to find out the reasons behind the massacre of innocent Muslims. The magisterial enquiry is also moving sluggishly. Four sessions have been conducted so far, and in spite of repeated summons the inspector who ordered the police firing has failed to turn up and issue a statement in defence of his action.
MP Asaduddin Owaisi has produced video clippings of the unrestrained firing as proof of police barbarism, and numerous representations have been made to speed up the inquiry, to no avail. Lamenting the inscrutable behaviour of the police, as also the government’s silence over the proceedings, the editorial said it is appalling that Muslims are the worst sufferers – being the victims as well as the culprits allegedly.