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Malegaon:
In a strongly worded statement released to the media, Jamia
Teachers’ Solidarity Association (JTSA) termed the framing of
Muslim youths in the 2006 Malegaon blast case as "deliberate" and
''cynical and communal targeting of innocents", and demanded
strict action against those who misled the probe.
"The NIA has finally put the official seal on what many activists,
the families of the accused and the people of Malegaon had been
saying for long: that the arrests of the nine Muslim men for the
2006 Malegaon blast was a result of a communal witch-hunt, which
passes for investigations into terror charges", said New Delhi
based JTSA's statement signed by Manisha Sethi, Ahmed Sohaib, Adil
Mehdi, Sanghamitra Misra and others.
"As a consequence of the
investigating agencies' hubris and prejudice, nine innocent men
had to spend five long years in jail, while their families
suffered and they were stigmatized", it said.
Stating that
Malegaon is not an exception but more a norm, the statement said,
"Remember
Mecca Masjid bombings, where scores of young men were tortured and
incarcerated. Or the CBI enquiry report in Delhi, which
established that Special Cell had kidnapped and framed two
Kahsmiris, both IB informers, as operatives of a terrorist group,
Al Badar. Or more recently, the acquittal of five Kashmiris by a
trial court in Delhi, where the court demonstrated that the
encounter in which these men were allegedly involved, was a
product of the Delhi police’s creative minds. It did not occur at
all! From Maharahstra to Delhi, from states ruled by BJP to those
presided over the Congress regimes, the story is the same."
"First, Let us be clear that these
are not minor or technical problems, where police and
investigative agencies have followed wrong leads or conducted
erroneous investigations in good faith. These were investigations
which were deliberately diverted on a wrong track because it was
convenient to produce someone as SIMI activist; or where false
confessions were manufactured through torture knowingly—as in
Hyderabad; or innocents were rounded up deliberately with
knowledge of their innocence simply because no one asked questions
about police claims", the statement said.
"These are not matters that can be
ignored as well-intentioned but inefficient investigations—they
were cynical and communal targeting of innocents in the name of
national security", it said
"Second, this acknowledgment has not
led to either compensation for victims or prosecution of erring
police officers. The Andhra Pradesh government shamelessly
challenges the claims for damages filed by the young men who were
brutally tortured by the AP police. Judge Virendra Bhatt’s verdict
earlier this year seeking the filing of FIR against those officers
of the Delhi police—included the decorated hero of Special Cell,
Ravinder Tyagi—who faked an encounter in 2005, and a departmental
enquiry is being contested by the Delhi police department", it
said.
"For all the tears that the PM may shed about the minorities’
perception of being unfairly targeted, till such time that the
government actually stops defending those who indulged in
frame-ups and punishes them, the faith in the fairness of the
investigating agencies—and the government’s intent—is unlikely to
be restored", the signatories concluded in the statement.
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