Letter From Tihar Jail

“Ussi Ka Shahr, Wohi Mud’daie Wohi Munsif – Mujhe Maloom Tha Mera Qasoor Nikle Ga (City theirs, pretender theirs; Theirs is the judge – I knew they’d find a fault in me),” Mohammad Iqbal Jan, rounds off a letter with the couplet, he has sent to Greater Kashmir from the Delhi’s Tihar Jail - he and his co-accused friend, Mushtaq Ahmad Kaloo, have been languishing in since November 2006। Iqbal and his friend were picked up by Delhi police from an old Delhi hotel on 16, November but were shown arrested from old Delhi’s railway station. “They (Delhi police) abducted us on gun point immediately after we checked out from the hotel, Rest-In, and bundled us in an Indica car,” the letter unfolding the sequence of events, reads. “They asked us to produce our identity cards which we did. They checked our suitcases. I was carrying Rs. 5,50,000 with me out of which I had paid Rs. 18,000 to Delton Industries at Pritampur. Their eyes lit up on seeing the cash and they snatched it. When I resented, they threatened to kill us.” The letter further reads, “They took us to Lodhi Colony where a special cell of Delhi police functioned and tied our hands to tables like animals. On 27 November, they told us that we’d be freed and instructed us to take bath and put on new clothes. They brought us to the old Delhi railway station in the night. They removed our jackets and took away our belongings.” Iqbal says, “The moment we were on the road, some policemen shouted, Pakdo, Pakdo (catch them, catch them). Some more cops appeared which were brought in the same vehicle that had just dropped us and pushed us into the car. I saw my suitcase lying open on the road with my belongings scattered. Strangely, there was a box lying nearby which did not belong to me. When I asked what it was, they said, there’re sweets in it. They took us back to their office and the next day they got a 10-day remand from a mobile magistrate at 6 p.m. using a rear entry to his office.” The duo was paraded before the media. “The police threatened us if we opened our mouth before the press, they would kill us and our family,” writes Iqbal. The police fabricated the case like this: “The duo was to collect a box of RDX from a person, Raju of Deoband at old Delhi railway station. The police apprehended the duo when they were waiting for him. A person namely Sikander Khan was made a public witness to the case.” Iqbal asserts, “This is how the Delhi police cooked up the story and got us falsely implicated.” Back home, the senior superintendent of police, Varmul, has issued a non-involvement certificate in favour of the accused. Even the village numberdar has certified the accused of their non-involvement in militant activities. “I’m ready to face a CBI probe,” Iqbal writes. “If I have done anything wrong, let me be punished. I don’t want to languish in the jail as an under-trial indefinitely.” A gas-distributor, Iqbal, with his friend Mushtaq Ahmad Kaloo had booked a Jet Airways flight to Delhi on 14 November. From the IGI airport, they had hired an auto-rickshaw and checked in at the hotel, Rest-In. Iqbal was carrying the money to be deposited in the company’s Chandigarh office. Iqbal writes they’re being subjected to all manners of ill-treatment in the jail. “Our kin travel all the way from Kashmir and the authorities do not allow them to meet us. We’ve been kept amongst hardcore criminals. They let us out only for one hour in the day. In the scorching heat, we’re not given a drop of water to drink. They abuse us whenever we raise our voice and even say bad things to our religion,” he writes. ‘If at all, we’ve done something wrong, why do they abuse our religion? Incidentally, the letter has come around the time when several reputed human rights activists from all over India had converged on Kashmir’s capital, Srinagar, to unleash their concern over the inhuman conditions of innocent natives in various jails across the country. A letter by India’s leading human rights activists to the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to “probe the communal policies of the Tihar authorities” has once again brought into sharp focus the malady which afflicts the custodians of law.

@ by M FAROOQ SHAH (GK)