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40 year-old Kamal Jahan Shaikh has been running from pillar to post in search of justice since mid-2003, when her nephew, Muhammad Parvez, was picked up in Ahmedabad by the Gujarat police and booked under the draconian POTA law. Yet, justice still eludes her, as it does, literally several thousand fellow Gujarati Muslims whose relatives have been arbitrarily arrested under POTA.
Parvez used to work for a company manufacturing water purifiers and was arrested by the police on his way to work. ‘They were in plain clothes and did not show any identity card’, Kamal relates. His family was told that he would be released in two hours, although more than five years have now lapsed without any sign of his release. He was charged with being involved in a number of cases, including in the murder of Haren Pandya, the former Gujarat Home Minister, and the ‘Tiffin Bomb’ case. Kamal, however, insists he was innocent. ‘He helped out in the relief camps in Ahmedabad in the wake of the anti-Muslim violence in 2002’, she explains, surmising that this might have been one reason for his arrest.
Parvez’s arrest has meant untold suffering for his family. ‘Our own relatives boycotted us, fearing that otherwise they, too, might be targetted’, Kamal tells me. She sees a larger design behind the arrest of her nephew and numerous other Muslim boys from her locality of Kalupur in Ahmedabad. ‘Modi wants to ensure that Muslims do not progress, that they do not get education and jobs, so that they have no future at all’, she insists.
Yasmeen Bano Shaikh, 37, is a mother of four. Her husband, Muhammad Hanif, used to eke out a living by stitching bags in his house in Ahmedabad’s largely Muslim Dariapur ghetto. The police alleged that the house was used to plot a bomb blast, without evidence, and he was arrested in mid-2003. ‘They took him away at 2:30 a.m., telling my mother-in-law that they would bring him back after half an hour’, says Yasmeen. She now struggles to maintain her family by making zippers for bags.
Anas Matchwala, 30, is the younger brother of Muhammad Uwais Matchwala. He used to sell belts for a living. In jail for the last four years, he has been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment in the ‘Tiffin Bomb’ case and 14 years in the Haren Pandya murder case, although Uwais insists he is innocent.
‘Even Vithalbhai Pandya, father of the slain Haren Pandya, also agrees that my son had nothing to do with Haren’s death and says that it was plotted by Modi himself’, says Uwais.
Uwais describes, in gruesome detail, the torture that Anas is said to have been subjected to in police custody and the threats that his family has also received. Anas is said to have been forced to sign blank papers. He was allegedly told that if he failed to sign them, his 70 year old father, who has already suffered three heart attacks, would receive the same brutal treatment.
Scores of other Muslim youth languishing in Gujarat’s jails and their hapless relatives have the same pathetic story to tell. Few of them can afford the prohibitive costs of hiring a lawyer to fight their cases. And then, the question is, besides them, is anyone listening? Does anyone else care?
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