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Bad Time To Be A Muslim

With no major breakthroughs in the Jaipur blasts case, a desperate Rajasthan police is resorting to illegal detentions, reports ANIL VERGHESE

IT HAS taken the Special Operation Group (SOG) almost a month to make the first official arrest over the serial blasts that killed at least 60 people in Jaipur on May 13.


While his arrest was announced on June 9, Bharatpur resident Mohammed Iliyas Kari has actually been in custody since May 22, just one among scores illegally incarcerated for weeks since the blasts. Predictably, the blasts released a spate of speculation over the outfit involved — the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Bangladeshi Harkat-ul-Jamat-e-Islam, the so-called Indian Mujahideen, and even the possibility of an unknown indigenous jehadi group. Sketches of suspects have been released and then withdrawn; the initial claim of the use of RDX has been retracted after forensic examination determined otherwise. Without a single concrete lead, the police have been making indiscriminate detentions — anyone in Jaipur who is from the wrong community and does not have a ration card has been hauled in. After the Rajasthan government’s decision to deport all Bangladeshis from the state, several Bengalis who eke out a living as rickshaw pullers and ragpickers have also been rounded up.

“Around 500 people have been detained, all of them Muslim,” says Mahir Azad, an MLA from Bharatpur. Clerics and madarsa teachers invariably top the list of the instantly suspect. Waliullah, once the Phulpur imam, has been awaiting trial since 2006 for his alleged connection with the Varanasi explosions. Mohammed Khalid Mujahid was arrested from Jaunpur after the November 2007 blasts in UP. As with Waliullah, the FIR against him postdates his arrest by several days, and indicts him on a series of fabricated charges. Thanks to UP’s lawyers’ refusal to defend terror suspects, Waliullah and Khalid still languish in jail.

Originally from Tirwada, Haryana, Mohammed Iliyas Kari had made the Jamia Darululoom mosque in Bharatpur’s Idgah colony his
Mohammed Iliyas Kari

home since 1994. Kari was responsible for the expansion of the mosque into a madarsa; the tubewell he commissioned for the school also serves the otherwise parched Idgah colony.

After his May 22 arrest, no one knew of Kari’s whereabouts for the next 72 hours, not even the local police station. “I was not told that any such arrest had been made,” says Mohar Singh Punia, Circle Inspector at the local kotwali. Three days later, it emerged that Kari had been taken to Jaipur in connection with the May 13 blasts. Two more arrests from the madarsa followed: one a teacher, the other a 15-year-old telephone booth operator (he has now been released).

Among those astounded by the allegations against Kari is Haji Aslam Khan Gauri, chairman of the Bharatpur Musalman Samaj, who remembers him as a well-respected member of the association. Kari was also, says Gauri, someone who made serious efforts to bridge sectarian divides. Chandrakant Garg, who has been selling automobile spares here since 1975, says he can’t imagine Kari being involved in the blasts.

Speaking to TEHELKA, Keshar Singh, Superintendent of Police, SOG, refused to admit to Kari’s illegal detention of over a fortnight. Instead, he said Kari had been arrested in Jaipur on June 8 with photocopies of two passports belonging to him, each with a different name and date of birth. Details of a third passport are awaited. “He has been arrested on charges of concealing information from the passport authorities,” Singh said. When asked where the originals of the documents were, Singh said they were sure to turn up in the course of Kari’s nine-day police remand.

The extent of Kari’s culpability is now up to the investigators to determine. Whether justice will be done for the May 13 victims or whether another scapegoat is to pay for a crime he did not commit remains to be seen.

From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 5, Issue 24, Dated June 21, 2008