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November 26, 2012 12:31:00 AM | By Zeeshan Shaikh
November 26, 2012 12:31:00 AM | By Zeeshan Shaikh
‘Why is papa not home despite SC acquittal?’
Mumbai : 26/11 has a
tragic resonance not only for the families of the 166 victims but also
for the family of a man who was falsely implicated on charges of
preparing ground for the terrorists.
Yasmeen
Ansari (36), wife of Faheem Ansari, a 26/11 accused who was acquitted by
the Supreme Court in August this year, went through hell in the last
four years trying to remove the tag of terrorist from her husband’s
name.
Yasmeen and her daughter Iqra (9) who
are living with the family of Fahim’s elder brother Usman Ansari in
Mumbra said, “After Faheem’s arrest, the stigmatised family faced so
many losses that his elder brother was reduced to a rickshaw driver from
a businessman.
”Thanks to our faith in Allah and
people like late advocate Shahid Azmi and general secretary of the
Jamiat-Ulema-e-Maharashtra Gulzar Azmi, who stood by us even when
relatives started distancing themselves from us, we were able to clear
our name,” said Yasmeen, who now makes a living as a seamstress.
Yasmin, who has studied till the 10th
standard at Madanpura in Central Mumbai, was married in 1997 to Faheem,
the youngest among nine siblings, who lived at Hanuman Nagar, Goregaon
(W).
He was arrested in Rampur district on
February 9, 2008 by the special task force of the UP police in
connection with the attack on the CRPF camp on the night of December 31,
2007 in which several CRPF personnel were killed.
Yasmeen said her husband didn’t even go
to Rampur. “Faheem had gone to Lucknow to buy dresses to sell in
Mumbai. I am not sure if it was February 1 or February 3, but it was
somewhere between these dates that Faheem went to Lucknow after which
his phone was unavailable.” Yasmeen said she was on the way to Bareilly
jail to meet Faheem when 26/11 happened and TV channels started saying
that he was one of the accomplices of the terrorists.
February 11, 2010, was one of the worst
days in Yasmeen’s life when she received a call from her brother who
asked her to switch on the television. “As soon as I switched on the TV,
everywhere there was news that Shahid Azmi, the lawyer of Faheem
Ansari, was shot in his office. After learning about his death, I was
worried about the ongoing case as only the final argument was left but
my husband was acquitted by the Sessions Court in 2010.”
The Supreme Court acquitted Faheem
Ansari and Sabahuddin Ahmed on August 29 this year for their role in
26/11. Faheem’s family has demanded compensation from the Central
Government for the financial losses they had suffered in last four
years.
The Jamiat-Ulema-e-Maharashtra, which
is fighting cases for more than 100 terror accused, had not charged a
single penny in Faheem’s case which was fought in Sessions Court then
challenged in the High Court and later in the Supreme Court. “We believe
in our judiciary and we are sure that we will succeed in getting an
acquittal from Allahabad High Court in Rampur CRPF camp firing case,”
said Yasmeen.
In October, the Akhilesh Yadav
government in Uttar Pradesh had appealed to the court asking if the case
against Faheem and the other accused in the CRPF camp attack along with
three more terror attack cases can be withdrawn, discharging the
accused. However, Faheem’s family is waiting for the response of the
court, which will come on November 29 on Akhilesh’s appeal.
”My nine-year-old daughter Iqra who
stood first in her school is confused and keeps asking me the same
question: since the court had acquitted her dad, why is he not coming
home,” said Yasmeen.
Zeeshan Shaikh
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Edit November 26, 2012 12:43:34 AM | By SEEMA MUSTAFA
The faceless State
The Indian State seems to have lost its
compassion somewhere along the way. Its first reaction, as the Mumbai
incident indicates, is to use its brute might to suppress even innocent
and minimalist dissent.
A
Facebook post said it all. The young man, a Muslim, “hailed” the
hanging of Pakistan terrorist Ajmal Kasab saying that his death would at
least put an end to the weight that some political parties and groups
were making Indian Muslims carry. And that while they basically did not
give a damn they were made to carry the cross through insinuations and
direct comments by communal forces always looking for shadows where none
exist.
Kasab’s hanging has not stirred a leaf
in India, or for that matter even in Pakistan amidst society that one
generally acknowledges as sane. Except for extremists like the Lashkar e
Tayaba whose reactions are expected, even the villagers in Faridkot in
Pakistan where Kasab ostensibly lived, chased away reporters saying they
were not interested in the issue at all. The young man had crossed
every civilized line when he, along with nine others, picked up the gun
to shoot down Indian citizens in Mumbai in one of the worst terror
attacks this country has ever seen.
In fact the debate post Kasab is not
about whether he should have been hanged, but about the death penalty
per se and whether it should be abolished or not. The one intelligent
move that the UPA government made was to ensure that the hanging took
place without the media being informed, as that prevented the 24-hour
news channels from sensationalizing the issue to a point where it could
have taken a nasty turn. Immature commentary, jingoism, ridiculous
interpretations before the hanging by hysterical anchors, would have
vitiated the atmosphere and given a handle to vested interests to make
communal hay.
As it is India was already reeling under
the shock of the arrest of two young girls for an innocuous Facebook
post on the death of Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray. The news channels
with their incessant coverage turned a political leader at best into a
hero, with not a single worthwhile analysis in the mainstream media of
his contribution to Indian politics, his declared admiration for Adolf
Hitler and how that had influenced his politics. An atmosphere had been
created by the television channels where the innocuous post allowed the
government and its police to arrest them after sundown, in an action
that sent tremors of fear through the city and anger through the
country. They were charged with inciting communal hatred, with not a
word about those who had forced a shutdown with the simple threat of
physical retaliation that did not want anyone taking chances.
In one stroke the Congress-NCP
government demonstrated that it was on the same page as the Shiv Sena
insofar as even mild dissent was concerned. Two, it had the authority
and the reach to monitor Facebook posts and three, with the arrests it
sent out the message to all others using the social media that they
should be careful of airing their views lest they meet with a similar,
or worse fate. The public outcry forced the government to release the
girls and dilute the charges, but last heard the cases had not been
withdrawn and they had to appear before the courts every week. In fact
the Shiv Sainiks maintained more discipline in the death of Thackeray
than the Congress party and the NCP who bent over backwards to prove
their loyalty with the arrests and the decision to give him a state
farewell.
The State fails when its citizens live
in fear. And not fear of each other but of the state’s inability to
provide them security, protect them from violence, and give them justice
as and when required. All over the country more and more sections of
society are being added to those who have lived a fearful existence for
decades now, with the percentage of the oppressed and victimized growing
as India supposedly marches forward towards economic growth and
emergence as a world power. Both goals cannot be realised by leaving
behind large sections of Indian society from the map of growth, equality
and justice but this is a point that our politicians seem to be in
denial mode about.
Fear of arrest, fear of attack, fear of
violence has crept into daily life along with all the other crippling
problems of food security. Those living in the big bungalows in state
capitals have little idea of this, and how this fear is generating
helplessness, resentment, disaffection amongst those at the receiving
end of the stick. This is evident from the outpourings in the social
media that of course insecure governments, not just in India but
elsewhere too want to curb. But it is also evident in the scale of
protests breaking out at different levels in this country, and the
tendency of the protestors to stay out on the streets for longer and
longer periods. The fishermen who stood in the water for days on end to
demand their just basic livelihood rights withstood the agony of swollen
feet, blisters and bites as their life outside had become so
meaningless, and were worthless without some compensation and support.
The Indian State seems to have lost its
compassion somewhere along the way. Its first reaction, as the Mumbai
incident indicates, is to use its brute might to suppress even innocent
and minimalist dissent. And unfortunately, unless the people are present
in sufficiently large numbers to beat back the authority of the state
there is never a second reaction. There is a severe disconnect between
the politicians and the people, with the first unable and unwilling to
appreciate the sensitivities and aspirations of the second. This has led
to a divide that expresses itself in violence by the state, and every
now and again by the people seeking redressal and justice.
In Delhi one becomes aware of a small
clique, as against the burgeoning humanity of India, that lives in
another world where the rich (industry) make common cause with the
powerful (politicians) and the influential (media) as all seek to get
into this exclusive group of power brokers. They protect each other, and
also determine the levels of indifference and callousness to the
‘other’ India to ensure that it does not impinge on their consciousness
in any significant manner. The funeral of known thugs and mafia dons
attracts the politicians and the film stars and the industrialists, but
there was not one person standing to hold the hands of the traumatized
girls still wondering what they had done that was so wrong.
SEEMA MUSTAFA
