http://kafila.org/2011/03/21/what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-muslim-in-india-today-mahtab-alam/#comment-15092

What does it mean to be a Muslim in India today?: Mahtab Alam

March 21, 2011

tags: Indian Muslims, Shahina KK, terrorism

 

by Shivam Vij

Guest post by MAHTAB ALAM

Shahina KK

Recently, Shanina K K, a journalist from Kerala, who worked with Tehelka news weekly and now works with Open magazine, received the Chameli Devi Award for being an outstanding woman journalist. While receiving the award she said, “See, I happen to be a Muslim, but I am not a terrorist.” What made her say that and what was she trying to convey or explain? It means, as she explains, “If you belong to the minority community, they will also profile you. It is very difficult to prove that you are not a terrorist. It is equally difficult to prove that you are not a Maoist in our life and times.”





Shahina has personal experience of it, so she must know. As most of us are aware, she has been falsely framed in under sections 506 and 149 of the Indian Penal Code, for ‘intimidating’ witnesses in the Abdul Nasir Madani case. Her only ‘crime’ was that she investigated the case of Kerala PDP leader Abdul Nasir Madani, who is an accused in the infamous Bangalore blasts case, and asked the question, “Why is this man still in Prison?” Madani had already spent 10 years in prison as an under-trail in the Coimbatore blast case of 1997 and who was later acquitted in 2007.

In fact, this writer has also had a similar personal experience, but thankfully, to a lesser degree of threat to his life during a fact finding visit of Giridih Jail in the state of Jharkhand, in July 2008. I was branded a Maoist along with two other friends, and illegally detained for five hours by Giridih Superintendent of Police, Murari Lal Meena who is now being promoted to the rank of DIG, Special Branch of the Jharkhand Police. He had also threatened to put us behind bars in the same prison without any hope of being bailed out for at least a year.

But this is not the story of some Shaina and Mahtab alone. This is a story, very typical of what happens to hundreds of Muslim youngsters who are arrested and tortured by the police with no evidence or on false charges. The testimonies published in two reports that have been released recently by ANHAD and Human Rights Watch show what it means to be a Muslim in India today. They are nothing short of spine chilling.

Nisar Ahmed, whose son Saqib Nisar is an accused in the 2008 bomb blast cases and who was arrested by Delhi Police after the infamous ‘encounter’ at Batla House says in HRW’s report, “When I asked my son if he was tortured, he said, ‘They are hardly going to treat me with love. They want to build the case… They used to make us memorize a story of the police version of the case. We were not allowed to sleep until we could recite the police version.”

Another testimony reads, “In August 2010, Mohammed Salman, a 17-year-old held in Delhi’s Tihar Jail in connection with bomb blasts in the capital, appeared in court with his head bandaged. Salman told the judge that two inmates had repeatedly slashed his face with a razor blade earlier that month. He said that the jail authorities “did nothing” to prevent the incident – international law prohibits the incarceration of children under 18 with adults – although he had twice requested transfer because he feared for his safety and when no action was taken against the attackers. He also accused guards of laughing and saying: “He is a terrorist and this is what should happen to him, anyway.”

I also remember Ataur Rahman of Mumbai, in his mid-sixties, whom I met during the people’s tribunal on the ‘Atrocities Committed against Minorities in the Name of Fighting Terrorism’ at Hyderabad in August 2008. At the tribunal he had told us, “My house was raided on July 20, 2006, by the anti-terrorism squad at around 9.30pm… they frisked our house and took three computers unlawfully and whisked me away to an unknown destination. For several days I was kept in illegal custody. I was then formally shown to be arrested on July 27, 2006, and an FIR was lodged against me… Me, my wife, my daughter and daughter-in-law were paraded before my arrested sons. We were abused and foulmouthed at by the police officers continuously. For all these days I was beaten up before my sons, similarly my sons were beaten up in front of me. The women of the family who were called up by the ATS daily were asked to drop their burqah before my arrested sons, and the sons were humiliated in front of the women folk by hurling abuses at them… The third day: I was again taken before my sons, who were handcuffed in the adjoining room. Here one officer… whom I can identify, beat me up and threatened me that the women in my family are outside and they will be stripped naked if I do not remove my clothes before my children and other police officers. Some other arrested accused were also brought there and I was stripped naked…”

There are hundreds of stories like this. Not only that, even if you are a non-Muslim and believe that Muslims have right not to be tortured, illegally detained and unnecessarily harassed, then you are doing a crime! Take the case of Vinod Yadav, a human rights’ activist and friend of mine from Azamgarh. Vinod was very active after the ‘encounter’ at Batla House and declaration of Azamgarh as ‘Nursery of Terror’ by both security agencies and media houses. In October 2008, when a joint fact finding team of PUDR, APCR, Janhastakshep and NCHRO visited Azamgarh and to which I was part of, he played a major role in to carry out the fact finding. But that cost him a lot. Within a week of our visit, he was arrested on a flimsy charge of cheating along with another activist Sarfaraz Alam at Lucknow station as they arrived from Azamgarh. They were taken by the state police to a secret detention centre in Lucknow and severely beaten for two days for participating in rallies against abuse of Muslim suspects in the bombings. Vinod was repeatedly told… ‘you are a Hindu and you are questioning the statements we make about Muslim boys and that is not good… You should not be seen with these Muslim people again, and if you don’t understand this, the future will be bleak for you’.

To be a Muslim in India today is to be encounter-able, to be constantly suspected of being a terrorist, to be illegally detainable and severely tortured, to have the possibility of being killed without being questioned, no matter if one is a believer, agnostic or an atheist. Carrying a Muslim name deserves and qualifies for the above treatment!

(Mahtab Alam is a civil rights activist and independent journalist. He can be reached at activist dot journalist at gmail dot com.)

Remembering Shahid Azmi, the Shaheed By Shivan Vij - Posted by Mahtab Alam

  http://kafila.org/2011/02/10/remembering-shahid-azmi-the-shaheed-mahtab-alam/#more-6655

Remembering Shahid Azmi, the Shaheed

by Shivam Vij
Guest post by MAHTAB ALAM


It must have been around nine pm on 11^th February last year. The nightfall and Delhi’s infamous wintry chill ensured that I stayed indoors at the mercy of closed walls and work for company. Sure enough, I was seated warmly in my setting of a cyber cafe of Jamia Nagar in Okhla. Okhla, an area I had migrated to as a 14 year boy from my hometown, to pursue my further education, like many other Muslim students from other parts of this country. As Basharat Peer has rightly observed, ‘India’s Muslims don’t move to Delhi; they move to Okhla’.

I was disturbed from my work by a call on my mobile. The caller, a friend of mine who used to live in Mumbai was calling to break the sad news of Shahid Azmi being shot dead by some ‘unidentified’ gunmen in his office late in the evening. The news was confirmed by my friends in Mumbai. It shook me and for a moment, I went numb with disbelief.

Shahid was just 32 when he was martyred. Though born and brought up in Mumbai’s suburb Deonar, an area better known for TISS, his familial linage traces back to Azamgarh, a city I had visited just a week before his murder. During my visits to Azamgarh, I found people across the age group speaking very high of him and always viewed him with respect. He was arrested by police from his home in 1994 for ‘conspiring’ to kill India’s top politicians. The only evidence was a confession he had never made. Yet, he was given five years of imprisonment. While at New Delhi’s Tihar Jail, Shahid enrolled himself for graduation and began helping other inmates to peruse their cases in the court of law. When released in 2001, he came home and enrolled for journalism and law school. Three years later, he quit a paying sub-editor’s job to join defence lawyer Majeed Memon as a junior at Rs 2,000 a month. Later, he started his own practice that made a lasting difference. In a short period of just 7 years of his career as a lawyer, he gained both fame and notoriety for his commitment for Justice.It would not be unfair to say that, he was a man produced, consumed and later set to his ‘right place’ by the system.

I had first heard about Shahid in early 2009 in a meeting organised at Advocate Prashant Bhushan’s residence, when we were told that he was the right person to avail the list of accused in terror related cases of Maharastra since he was representing many of them. Later, at a condolence gathering organised by Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity Association, Advocate Prashant, recalling his association and few of his meetings with Shahid said, “Shahid was a brilliant lawyer with an extraordinary commitment for justice”.

In the last days of January of 2009, Shahid and I were invited as resource persons to speak at a workshop of paralegal activists at Mumbai organised by the Maharashtra chapter of Association for the Protection of Civil Rights (APCR), a civil rights’ group I was working with till I moved to Jharkhand to work at the grassroots. But I could not meet him as I arrived a day late. I still remember when I recall that the participants of the workshop were greatly impressed by his presentation and his personality. It reminds me of the words of Monica Sakrani, a friend of Shahid’s and associated with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. In an obituary piece that appeared in Economic and Political Weekly, “He was good at explaining things and came to Tata Institute of Social Sciences to take classes for the students as a guest faculty. His honesty, extensive knowledge, unassuming demeanor, good looks, boyish charm, soft voice and self-deprecating humour made him win over the students completely. They would be unwilling to let him go and the consensus every year was that his class was the best that they had ever had”. Later, when I saw the video of his presentation for APCR’s workshop, I realised I could not agree with them any less.

“He would tell the students about his childhood in Deonar, and how during his growing years he saw the institute and dreamt of entering it one day and that he had never imagined that he would come there one day to take a class. He would open up and share extremely personal, painful experiences with the students describing his years in the jail and the manner in which he was tortured. When asked about the most painful torture that he went through, he replied, not being given the Sehri (breakfast) during the month of Ramzan. He said that this was more painful than the physical torture that he went through. When students asked him what he felt the solutions to the problems were, he would softly reply – justice,” wrote Monica.

“At the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR) and Indian Association of People’s Lawyers (IAPL) both of which he was an active member of, everyone respected him for his knowledge and experience which was far beyond his young years and took his counsel on important issues including the legal cases”. But she also reminds us, “His work was not confined to only defending the cases that he gained notoriety for. He pro-actively took up causes of the oustees of the Mithi river beautification project and slum dwellers whose houses were demolished…He did not confine himself to reading his briefs and defending his cases well but also in analyzing them. He wanted to do his PhD and document the terror cases. In Mumbai he was probably the most knowledgeable person about terrorism, counter terrorism and the state’s modus operandi. At meetings, he would speak softly, slowly and concisely on issues and hold everyone’s attention with his layered and insightful analysis”.

Monica calling  Shahid as the most knowledgeable person about terrorism and counter terrorism in Mumbai is confirmed by the report,  The “Anti-Nationals”—Arbitrary Detention and Torture of Terrorism Suspects in India recently released by Human Rights Watch (HRW). Shahid is the only lawyer based in Mumbai who’s acknowledged in the report and quoted at various places. Letta Tayler, a researcher in the Terrorism and Counterterrorism program at HRW and one of the writers of the report told me that she had met Shahid in June 2009 and he meticulously described the alleged abuse of his Muslim clients who were accused of links to deadly bomb blasts in 2008 in Delhi, Ahmedabad and Jaipur. “As I listened to his words, I couldn’t help but fear for his future. The light he radiated seemed impossibly bright,” she recalled. “During more than five years in prison, Azmi explained to us, he decided that the most effective way to fight injustice was through the rule of law”. “But the quest for justice that he inspired cannot be extinguished”, she adds.
It is true that Shahid is not amongst us, and his untimely and violent death foreclosed rich possibilities that lay before all of us interested in justice. But the fact is that, in the last twelve months of his martyrdom, there has not been a single day that goes by without me thinking of Shahid. During last year, whenever I’ve visited courts or seen people wearing the lawyer’s uniform, i am reminded of Shahid and of my desire to follow in his footsteps. Even if he goes off my mind for a moment, the words of my senior friend Ajit Sahi and who closely worked with Shahid, would remind me that, “Shahid isn’t dead and will never be. I, for one, am far more determined to pursue the path he has shown. Just what bullet can take away the invaluable lesson in courage he has taught me?” I am sure that this holds equally for all of us.

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http://twocircles.net/2011feb11/adv_khalid_azmi_carrying_legacy_shaheed.html

Advocate Khalid Azmi, carrying on the legacy of the Shaheed

Submitted by admin4 on 11 February 2011 - 5:41pm

• Articles
• Indian Muslim

By Mahtab Alam, TwoCircles.net,

On 11th of February last year, when Advocate Shahid Azmi was gunned down by three ‘unidentified’ persons, the two obvious questions arose. Who can be behind his murder and who will carry on the legacy and the work of Shahid Azmi? Though, the first question is still unanswered, the second was answered by none other than his younger brother, Adv. Khalid Azmi. Within a week, Khalid instead of mourning long over the murder of Adv. Shahid Azmi, declared, ‘Lo, I’m here to take up my Brother, Shahid Azmi’s cause’.

In a telephonic interview on 25th February last year, Advocate Khalid Azmi, the youngest brother of Shahid, told me, “I want to take up my brother’s cause and I take it as a matter of both challenge as well as a real tribute to him”. When asked if he didn’t think he was putting his life in danger by this decision, a determined Khalid had this to tell me, “I don’t fear for my life. Cause is more important and I am ready to pay the price for it, no matter if it’s with my life”.

It was Khalid’s determination that resulted in the acquittal of Fahim Ansari, an accused in the 26/11 terror attacks case. He fought the case along with his senior, R V Monakshi. The court acquitted Fahim on 3rd May, 201o, saying that the prosecution’s evidence to prove that he was part of the conspiracy was unreliable. Now, the case is in the High Court of Maharashtra as the government has appealed against the judgement delivered by the lower court. But, again Khalid is hopeful about the verdict. “I am sure that the verdict will be like that delivered by the lower court”, Khalid told me this morning, speaking on the telephone from his home. He was on leave today, and wanted to spend time at home with his family remembering his brother.

Before Shahid’s martyrdom, Khalid used to practice at the Kurla magistrate court and sometimes on bail applications at sessions court. Now, after Shahid’s murder, he represents Shahid’s clients in a number of cases. Since then, he has represented many of the Mumbai train bomb blast accused and is busy with cases related to Aurangabad Arms Haul, Malegaon 2006 blasts, Official Secrets Act, etc. He is happy that he has been able to make a difference. “Many cases, which were lying in the cold storage of courts, have started moving. And I hope justice will delivered soon”, said an excited Khalid.

At the end of our conversation, I asked the same question I had asked him last year, “Aren’t you afraid?” “Mere pas ab khone ke liye kya rah gaya hai (What else do I have now to lose?)”, said Khalid in one go without pausing for a moment. Khalid might not be afraid but the community and families whose wards he is fighting fear. Let’s hope, Khalid has a long life so that access to justice by the poor does not remain a distant dream. May the prayers of Dhanna Parshuram Kotekar, a widow in her sixties, who lives in a slum of Kranti Nagar, Kurla and who has hugely benefited from the Azmi brothers do not go unanswered as her lips move in prayer, “My other son Khalid is my son now. May Bhagwan take good care of him”. Ameen!


(Mahtab Alam is a civil rights’ activist and journalist currently based at Ranchi. Contact: activist dot journalist at gmail dot com.)