Acquitted man takes three dailies to court for calling him “Terrorist”

“Why is this media trial going on even when the court has acquitted me in all cases?”

Syed Wasif Haider— Photo: Special Arrangement

Alleging that he was being labelled a “terrorist” in media reports despite having being acquitted after serving an eight-year jail sentence, a 40-year-old has filed writs against three Hindi dailies.

Kanpur-based Syed Wasif Haider, who was arrested in August 2001 on 12 charges, has filed writs against Dainik Jagran , Dainik Hindustanand Amar Ujala for “running his media trial even after his acquittal” and frequently referring him as an “atanki”.

Mr. Haider was part of the delegation led by Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat that met President Pranab Mukherjee recently and handed over to him a memorandum outlining how Muslim youth were being targeted and persecuted in terrorism-related cases.

Mr. Haider was acquitted on August 12, 2009, after serving a sentence over charges of rioting, attacking a Provincial Armed Constabulary vehicle, murdering an additional district magistrate and involvement in the Swarup Nagar pressure-cooker explosion case. According to Mr. Haider, “A December 9, 2010, report in Dainik Jagran [referred to me] as “atanki Wasif” in a story speculating the Kanpur connection of the 2010 Varanasi bomb attack. The report said the police were closely monitoring the normal lives of terrorists who had been released from jail, their phone records and sources of income. A similar report was published two days later.”

“I was not booked under TADA or POTA, yet, even while I was under trial, I was labelled an atanki. ” Also, the Special Cell’s charges of sedition were dismissed by the court even before they could be filed. “So why is this media trial going on even when the court has acquitted me in all the cases?”

Mr. Haider’s fight against “irresponsible and prejudiced” media reporting during and after his trial has affected not only his economic standing but also his reputation. He and his family are now supported by his father and sister.

“After my release, I spent a good amount of time convincing people of my innocence. And, to some extent, people started trusting me again. But with these reports, they have grown suspicious again and I have become a social outcaste. I have no job. Nobody wants to have any connection with me. My young daughter also gets taunted at school,” he rued.

Mr. Haider said the newspapers, to whom he sent legal notices in April regarding their reportage, are yet to respond. In September, he alleges, Amar Ujala published a story in which his father was referred to as a “Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist”.

“My father has won many awards in translating text. He is also a Sahitya Akademi award winner,” he added.

Mr. Haider’s defamation case against Dainik Jagran is pending in the Allahabad High Court. The paper’s Editor Sanjay Gupta said he was not aware of any such case or notice. The paper’s legal adviser, B.K. Mishra, also said the management had received no such notice and it was the paper’s prerogative whether or not to respond to any such notice. The HR department of Amar Ujala said it had received a notice from Mr. Haider but it could not confirm the content of the news reports as alleged by Mr. Haider.

Last Tuesday, Mr. Haider filed a petition against Amar Ujala in the Supreme Court under Article 32.

Cases against Dainkik Hindustan and Amar Ujala are pending with the Special Judicial Magistrate.

Dainik Hindustan was not available for comment. Rihai Manch, a civil society group working for the release of innocent persons arrested in terror cases, said compensation and rehabilitation must be ensured to such innocent undertrials and proper enquiry called against police officers who wrongfully implicated such persons.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-newdelhi/acquitted-man-takes-three-dailies-to-court-for-calling-him-terrorist/article4158712.ece

Dubbed terror mastermind without any proof...Acquitted..

Mohammad Amir Khan with a photo of himself at 18, when he was jailed on charges of plotting the 1996-97 serial blasts.

NEW DELHI: At the age of 18, he had allegedly planted as many as 28 bombs in Delhi and NCR, that too single-handedly in all but one instance.Mohammad Amir Khan had, therefore, been implicated in 19 cases, charged with serious offences such as murder and waging war against the government. Yet, after spending 14 years in jail, he was released last month after being acquitted in all but two cases.

Though the courts have been acquitting him since 2001, the prosecution has so far not filed an appeal in any of them. Police officials told TOI they had no plans to appeal even against the last of the acquittals , tacitly admitting that they have no real evidence against Amir in any of those 17 cases. And yet they had no hesitation in projecting Amir as the mastermind of the serial blasts of 1996-97.

Amir and his counsel, human rights lawyer N D Pancholi, are optimistic about the appeals before the Delhi high court against the two convictions. A close reading of the judgments shows that the evidence cited against Amir in the two cases in which he has been convicted is as flawed as the 17 in which he has been acquitted, either by the trial court or the high court.

All the 19 cases are critically based on the testimonies of two witnesses, both of whom have completely contradicted the prosecution version. Chander Bhan, who was then a tea stall owner in Chandni Chowk, denied the police claim that he had accompanied them, along with Amir, to an alleged bomb factory in Pilakhua run by co-accused Mohammad Shakeel.

Worse, Bhan deposed in the court that he had never even seen either of the two accused.

Key witnesses contradicted cops on Amir

The other crucial witness cited by the police, Abdul Sattar, who is the owner of the factory premises, denied that he had ever seen Amir visiting Shakeel in Pilakhua. Much to the police's embarrassment, Sattar also denied that any explosive ingredients had been recovered in his presence from a textile printing unit run by Shakeel.

Thus, by "turning hostile" , Bhan and Sattar have left a gaping hole in the prosecution story on how the bombs had been sourced by Amir. As if that were not bad enough, the scores of other witnesses cited by the police for the blast sites did not help sustain the prosecution version.

While admitting their presence on the blast spot, most of the witnesses claimed to have not seen the person who had placed the bomb. As a corollary, they denied having seen Amir anywhere near any of the blast sites. Even the few who claimed to have seen the person planting the bomb either asserted that Amir was not the same person or their identification of Amir was found doubtful by the court.

Not surprisingly, the Delhi high court, while overturning his conviction in a Karol Bagh blast, observed that "the prosecution has miserably failed to adduce any evidence to connect the accused appellant with the charges framed, much less prove them." So, how did the police go so wrong in implicating Amir, after he had been touted as a breakthrough in the investigation of the serial blasts?

The investigators insist that regardless of the outcome of the court cases, they had caught the "right man." When contacted by TOI, they had no explanation for the mismatch between their version and the testimonies of their own witnesses. They take refuge in the fact that these low-intensity blasts relate to the six-year interregnum between two terror laws, TADA and POTA. The officers claim to have zeroed in on Amir on the basis of telephone intercepts, but there's no scope for them to use that as evidence under the ordinary criminal law. Similarly, his alleged disclosure to the police is also not admissible in evidence in the absence of a terror law.

As a result, the police could not bring up before the courts that Amir's disclosures had helped them bust other terror modules across the country. For the police, what is even more ironic is that Amir is off the hook even as six Pakistanis have been convicted in a 2001 case for plotting to secure his release by kidnapping VIPs such as cricketers Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly and former President A P J Abdul Kalam.

The judgments, however, point to loose ends left by the police in the multitude of cases they had brought against Amir. Here are some examples of shoddy investigation:
In a blast inside a bus near Amba Cinema in February 1997, a witness claimed to have seen Amir plant the bomb. However, not only was his statement recorded a year and a half after the incident , it was found that he gave no description of that person and identified the person as Amir only after he was shown Amir in custody.

In the same case, the witness also contradicted himself by saying that the person who had planted the bomb also alighted from the bus still holding the packet he believed to be the bomb. The court observed, "No reliance can be placed on the sole testimony of this witness."

While he was patrolling a Hindu procession on Qutab Road, a sub-inspector of police saw a suspicious packet being exchanged minutes prior to a bomb blast, but could not depose whether Amir was the same person though he "looked like him." The court said, "It is really strange that being a police officer , he does not try to apprehend the culprit. The testimony of this witness does not inspire any confidence."

After a bomb blast inside a bus in Burari claimed one person's life, witnesses claimed to have seen two boys in mid-twenties alight from bus minutes before the blast took place. The father of the deceased, appearing as a prosecution witness, claimed that though he had seen two boys occupy the seat under which the bomb had been placed and then alight the bus before the blast, he denied that accused Amir and Shakeel were the same boys and said that he had never seen them earlier.

Though an eyewitness to a blast in Rohtak claimed to have seen the bomber, the police failed to take follow-up action. As the court put it, "This witness was material witness and due to non-examination of this witness, the whole prosecution story becomes doubtful [... ] It is also pertinent to mention here that the complainant and other injured witnesses have not been examined by the prosecution despite numerous opportunities."

(To be continued)

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Dubbed-terror-mastermind-without-any-proof/articleshow/12013001.cms?

The Muslim Question: Stories of false terror. (A Compilation of cases by Tahelka)

On March 25, 2013, Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde promised fast-track courts to try Muslim citizens accused of terrorist activities. Even as a stated intent, this is a watershed moment in the battle to secure justice for hundreds of innocent Muslims rotting in prisons despite a complete lack of evidence. Since 2001, when SIMI, a radical Muslim students’ outfit, was banned, young Muslim boys have been arrested as a cynical default mode, prejudged and condemned by the media, public and security establishment even before trials could begin. The poisonous idea that “Every Muslim is not a terrorist but every terrorist is a Muslim” had seeped into the country’s consciousness. No one was interested in the facts.
This began to change substantially in August 2008, when Tehelka began to publish a series of in-depth investigations into such cases. The colossal scale of abuse and injustice was brought into the public domain for the first time. Over the last five years, Tehelka’s reporters, Ashish Khetan, Ajit Sahi, Rana Ayyub, Harinder Baweja, Baba Umar, Imran Khan, Brijesh Pandey, G. Vishnu and Zahid Rafiq have exposed hundreds of such cases. Here is a compendium of this reportage. Tehelka’s pathbreaking coverage on the subject has undoubtedly changed the discourse on counterterrorism in India. But the battle for justice will remain unfinished until all the accused who are innocent are absolved of false charges, rehabilitated and compensated for their terrible suffering. And the guilty get punished.

 

 

The fight for Muslims is fundamental for the survival of our democracy

SOME YEARS ago, at a TEHELKA press conference, a young Muslim man walked up to TEHELKA Editor Tarun Tejpal and held his hand in deep gratitude. “If it had not been for your journalists, we would long have picked up the gun. Your work gives us hope, Sir,” he said. “You help us believe we belong to this country.”
It was one of those rare moments of vindication journalists live for. The young man’s father, a respected maulvi, was falsely incarcerated then. We had just written his story. He would be acquitted a few years later.  Read More>

~Tehelka Coverage~

EXPOSÉ: The SIMI Fictions
In a crucial investigation over three months, Editor-at-Large Ajit Sahi tracked the SIMI fictions across 11 cities —Trivandrum, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Udaipur, Bhopal, Mumbai, Delhi, Aurangabad, Ahmedabad and Gorakhpur. His findings are alarming and distressing. They demand urgent introspection and corrective action.  Read More>
In The Words Of A Zealot…
ON 18 DECEMBER 2010, a team of CBI sleuths escorted an elderly Bengali man Naba Kumar Sarkar, 59 — popularly known as Swami Aseemanand — from Tihar jail to the Tis Hazari court in Delhi, where he was produced before metropolitan magistrate Deepak Dabas. Aseemanand is the key accused in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast that killed nine people. This was his second court appearance in a span of little over 48 hours. On 16 December, Aseemanand had requested the magistrate to record his confession about his involvement in a string of terror attacks. He stated that he was making the confession without any fear, force, coercion or inducement. Read More>
An Angry Hall Of Fall Guys. And Unfair Arrests
A dangerous prejudice had slipped into the Indian criminal justice system: if there was a blast, a Muslim was behind it. For this, these 32 Muslims had to pay for blasts done by Hindutva extremists. Ashish Khetan reports.
Read More >

Chilling Confession

The Gujarat Police took quick credit for arresting the masterminds behind the July 2008 blasts in Ahmedabad. Rana Ayyub tracks the police’s star witness to find he has been tortured into falsely implicating the ‘masterminds’. An exclusive report
Read More >

Malegaon Files

The blasts chargesheet is silent on the role of other right-wing groups, says Rana Ayyub
Read More >

Deceptive Piety

Is Goa blast accused Sanatan Sanstha merely a harmless religious organisation or a dangerous cult that will stop at nothing? Rana Ayyub finds out.
Read More >

Gujarat Home Minister Amit Shah Called Cops Arrested For Killing Tulsi Prajapati

Rana Ayyub gets hold of crucial call records on which the CBI is building its case.
Read More >

BREAKTHROUGH EXPOSÉ: So Why Is Narendra Modi Protecting Amit Shah?

‘The calls made by the minister are not part of official decorum. Their frequency is unnatural and uncommon in nature.’ — Gujarat CID report on Amit Shah’s calls to encounter cops  Read More >

First On Tehelka: Amit Shah In The Dock

Former Home Minister Amit Shah will be questioned by the CBI between July 28 and July 30 in Sabarmati Jail. The CBI has obtained permission for the interrogation to be recorded on camera – to guard against future retractions. Tehelka first retrieved the call records that implicated Shah in the encounter killings of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Kauser Bi.  Read More >

Malegaon. Mecca Masjid. Ajmer Sharif. Why Are Tapes Implicating Ultra Hindutva Outfits In Terror Blasts Gathering Dust?

 Tehelka has accessed 37 audio tapes, two videos and several witness statements that cast further light on the Malegaon blasts case of 2008  Read More >

Together, They Ran The Home Ministry. If Amit Shah Is In The Dock, Modi Cannot Remain Unscathed

SINCE THE sensational arrest of Gujarat junior Home Minister Amit Shah last week, the BJP has been crying hoarse about a Congress conspiracy; about the CBI being a “Congress bureau of investigation”; and of how the case against Shah is built on legally flimsy grounds.  Read More >

The Unturned Stone

The Malegaon blast probe threw up 37 audiotapes in which ultra-Hindu groups plot terror attacks. These tapes expose a shocking nexus between Military Intelligence men and the outfits. Two years later, why is this still unexplored, asks Rana Ayyub  Read More >

The Terror. The Threat. The Twist

Rana Ayyub examines the phenomenon of the Indian Mujahideen.
Read More >

Hoisting An Old Trick

The BJP in Karnataka is fanning communal fears to consolidate the Hindu vote, reports Imran Khan
Read More >

Who Will Pay For Injustice Done To These Nine Men?

ASHISH KHETAN exposes the elaborate and cynical charade of the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad to implicate a bunch of Muslim men in terrorist strikes aimed at members of their own community
Read More >

Not Just A Confession. Forensic Evidence Piles Up Against Hindutva Terror

Over the past three years the evidence gathered by the agencies against a team of RSS pracharaks and lunatic Hindutva groups like Abhinav Bharat and Jai Vande Matram is compelling
Read More >

Ghost Of Fake Encounters Comes Back To Haunt Gujarat

A CBI progress report on the four fake encounters of 2004-2007 in Gujarat establishes what TEHELKA has been saying all along. Now, senior policemen and IB officials face arrests in these cases, says Rana Ayyub
Read More >

Dead Man Talking

It’s not just Ishrat Jahan. Rana Ayyub accesses exclusive intelligence inputs and pieces together a damning trail on another encounter in Gujarat. The story of Sadiq Jamal’s death raises uncomfortable questions the government might find difficult to answer.
Read More >

More Questions No Answers
IN MORE placid times, Motilal Nagar, No. 2 would be just another by lane in one just another one of Mumbai’s suburbs — one with a predominantly Muslim population. However, it has been attracting continuous media attention for the last couple of months ever since one of its residents — 37-yearold Faheem Ansari — was taken into custody by the Mumbai Police Crime Branch for his role in the terror attacks of 26/11.
Read More>

How Do You Keep The Faith?
TEHELKA BEGAN 2011 with the publication of Swami Asimananda’s stunning confession (In the words of a zealot, by Ashish Khetan, 15 January), which not only changed the terror discourse in the country but also the lives of seven Muslim men who were arrested after the 2006 blasts that took 37 lives in Malegaon, Maharashtra. Last week, six of them, hailing from different strata of Muslim society, returned home to a rousing welcome after getting bail. But the family of Mohammad Zahid, the poorest of the lot, will perhaps have to wait longer.
Read More >

 ‘I’m Jobless. I Can’t Start A Business Also Because Friends Refuse Me Loans’
SYED WASIF HAIDER, a resident of Kanpur, UP, was jailed for eight years, before the courts finally acquitted him of all charges on 14 August 2009. As a part of the delegation meeting the president on 18 November, he had only one thing to say: “Please stop the media from defaming me. I was declared innocent in 2009. Yet, the local media drags my name in whenever there’s a blast. I’m facing a social boycott. Children in the locality don’t play with a ‘terrorist’s’ daughters. Relatives feel police will hound them for visiting me.”
Read More >
From Death To Acquittal, A Journey Of Two Men
THEY HAD been handed out the harshest sentence the penal code allows — death. But on 22 November, 16 years after they were charged, the Delhi High Court set aside their death sentences, acquitting Mahmud Ali Bhat, 43, and Mirza Nissar Hussain, 32, of any involvement in the 1996 Lajpat Nagar bomb blasts.
Read More >

‘My Family Saw A Disorder In Me, But That Had Become My Order’
SYED MAQBOOL SHAH of Kashmir has a similar story of injustice and wrongful incarceration. In the bylanes of Srinagar’s Lal Bazaar, Shah’s two-storey decrepit house in Jan Mohalla has become a wellknown structure. Those looking for direction to this house are guided till the gate.
Read More >

‘Justice Made Me Realise That I Was Guilty Until Proven Innocent’
FOURTEEN YEARS is a long time. Wiping away the tears streaming down his cheeks, Mohammad Aamir recounts his experience of when he stepped out of the Rohtak Jail on 9 January 2012.
Read  More >

Terror That Wasn’t
THE SPECIAL CELL of the Delhi Police was formed in 1986 as a counter-terrorism force. It shot into prominence in the late 1990s, claiming to have killed many terrorists and to have solved several cases. In time, some of its officers began to figure in extortion cases and dubious encounters. Tellingly, over the last four months, lower courts in Delhi have acquitted nine “terrorists” arrested by the Special Cell. Four such “terrorists” were arrested after an encounter in southwest Delhi in March 2005. Police claimed they had averted a major terrorist attack on the Indian Military Academy (IMA), Dehradun. Five years later, all four men were acquitted. Brijesh Pandey profiles the four terrorists who never were.
Read More >

The Storyteller Becomes The Story
ON 13 FEBRUARY, Syed Ahmed Kazmi was sitting in television news studios as an expert on Iran soon after the bombing of the car carrying the Israel Defence Attaché’s wife in New Delhi. Kazmi, who had widely reported on West Asia, fearlessly spoke his mind, rubbishing Israel’s claim that the attack was masterminded by Iran.
Read  More >

‘I Was Picked Up Because I Lived In The Same House As The Other Accused’
Muthi-Ur-Rahman Siddique, a journalist with the Deccan Herald in Bengaluru, was arrested last year, along with 14 others, in an alleged plot to assassinate prominent Right-leaning journalists and politicians in Karnataka. The National Investigating Agency (NIA) took over the case from the Karnataka police two months ago and dropped charges against Siddique and a co-accused, Yusuf Nalband. Siddique was released on 25 February. In a conversation with Imran Khan, Siddique shares his six-month ordeal behind the bars, and how the tag of a ‘mastermind’ affected his life and family.
Read More>

Tihar jail has 53 Kashmiris. Like Dar, most were framed
GHULAM MOHIDEEN Dar suffered for no cause, no idea, no movement — just for being a Kashmiri. A thought that haunts him as he adjusts to new realities of life after being freed from a long incarceration. Dar contested the 2004 Parliamentary election from the Pulwama-Islamabad constituency as an independent candidate and later joined the Congress. He was also a dealer in Gulnar tea, and frequently came to Delhi on business. On one such trip on 15 June 2005, Dar met the then minister of state for defence and also sought an appointment with the President.
Read More >

‘I Was Forbidden From Receiving Religious Books In Jail’
Forty-nine-year-old Anjum Zamarud Habib, founding member of the Hurriyat Conference, was falsely implicated under POTA. Habib’s memoir Prisoner No 100 is a rare and shocking account of a tortured five years in Tihar jail and a critique of the judicial system. She talks to Yamini Deenadayalan on a visit to Delhi (a place she “never feels free in and fears”). Edited excerpts.
Read More >

How Police Hid The Truth For 15 Years

In 1996, four people were bundled into a police van. One escaped, while there’s still no news of the other three. Baba Umar travels to Bhaderwah to expose the cover-up
Read More >

‘I Don’t Feel Any Purpose In Life Now’

Mirza Iftikhar Hussain, 40
Namchebal, Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir by Baba Umar
 Read More >

Came For Work, Got Sentenced Instead

Shakeel Ahmad Khan, 50
Hazratbal, Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir by Baba Umar 
Read More >

Life In Jail Was Hell, It Is No Better Outside

Syed Maqbool Shah, 32
Lal Bazaar, Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir by Baba Umar 
Read More >

Grounded For 5 Years, Will He Ever Fly Again?

Imran Ahmad Kirmani, 29
Nelipora hamlet, Handwara Jammu & Kashmir by Baba Umar 
Read More >

‘I Was Forbidden From Receiving Religious Books In Jail’

Forty-nine-year-old Anjum Zamarud Habib, founding member of the Hurriyat Conference, was falsely implicated under POTA. Habib’s memoir Prisoner No 100 is a rare and shocking account of a tortured five years in Tihar jail and a critique of the judicial system. She talks to Yamini Deenadayalan on a visit to Delhi (a place she “never feels free in and fears”). Edited excerpts.  Read More >

The War On Terror & Its Collateral Damage

Over 10 years in jail. For a crime they did not commit. Baba Umar on the Muslims whose lives became hell in false terror cases 
Read More >

‘I’m Jobless. I Can’t Start A Business Also Because Friends Refuse Me Loans’

Syed Wasif Haider
Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh by Baba Umar  
Read More >

‘My Family Saw A Disorder In Me, But That Had Become My Order’

Syed Maqbool Shah
Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh by Baba Umar  
Read More >

From Death To Acquittal, A Journey Of Two Men

The acquittal of two men on death row raises questions on the process of terror probes in India, says Baba Umar  
 Read More >

 

 

The war on terror & its collateral damage 

Tehelka Exposé helped in nailing Amit Shah 

  The CBI is now saying what Tehelka said then 

  ‘They just want Muslim boys to always be in jail’

Stop harassing Muslim youths by dubbing them terror suspects

LUCKNOW: Civil society members in Lucknow have demanded government to take effective measures to put a check on incidents of harassment of innocent Muslim youths by police, anti-terror squad and intelligence agencies on the false terror charges. The demand was made after a 'public hearing' in which several Muslim youth, who were allegedly victimised and harassed by security agencies, narrated their tale of woes before people.
Shaukat Ali, a teacher and resident of Pratapgarh. claimed that he was being harassed by security agencies since August 2008. Though, he said, he has been questioned several times by the police, no proof has been given so far. But, he added, the questioning by police has made him a 'suspect' in the eyes of his students and neighbours, leading to humiliation.He had lodged complaint with higher authorities but nothing happened so far.
Mohammad Shahdab, from Azamgarh, claimed that he nephew and son were falsely implicated in terror charges. Other victims claimed that they were being branded as agents of various terror organisations by the security agencies without any proof. They also claimed that police demands money while threatening to put them in jail. Police detains Muslim youth for questioning without following procedure laid down in law, they added.
Former Indian police services officer SR Darapuri, after the hearing, said that it seems that police and security agencies are working for saffron organisations. Former vice-chancellor of Lucknow University Prof RR Verma said that the media should exercise restrain while projecting a person as terror only on the statement of security agencies because often accused are acquitted for want of evidence but adverse publicity makes thier life hell.
S M Naseem, another Former Indian Police Service officer, said that security agencies round up innocent people on false charges for awards and promotion. Lawer Mohammed Shoeb, who is fighting cases of Muslim youths facing terror charges, said even after acquittal, youth are seen with suspicion by the society, spoiling their career.The activists demanded compensation for victims and action against officers responsible for harassment.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/Stop-harassing-Muslim-youths-by-dubbing-them-terror-suspects/articleshow/14324969.cms