Pharaonic Weapon to Crush and Oppress Muslims in India

A series of seven bombs went off in the first-class compartment of local trains. 187 killed. 824 injured. This is how the Mumbai train blasts unfolded on the fateful day of July 11, 2006. And in the days that followed, the ATS (Anti-Terror Squad) sleuths promptly identified 13 ‘terrorists’, who were arrested under MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act) and sent to jail. Apparently, the case was successfully cracked!

The ATS even claimed that the accused were members of the banned outfit Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and had hatched the conspiracy with Pakistani members of terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

Court Proceedings and Acquittals

A special court in 2015 convicted 12 persons in the case of whom 5 were sentenced to death and the remaining 7 were given life imprisonment. One of the convicts died pending hearing of the appeal. Another accused, Wahid Shaikh, was acquitted by the trial court after he spent nine years in jail.

Now, 19 years down the line, it did not fit their ‘war on terror’ narrative. No evidence found. All the 12 ‘Muslim terrorists’ (one died) were acquitted including the five who were sentenced to death.

A Flawed Investigation

In a significant blow to the credibility of the Maharashtra ATS, which investigated the case, the Bombay High Court observed that the prosecution had not even established the type of explosives used in the incident. Furthermore, the evidence presented was deemed insufficient and inconclusive to secure a conviction against the accused. The 12 accused, incarcerated for 18 years, succeeded in establishing before the High Court the fact of torture inflicted on them to extort confessional statements.

The Pattern of Blaming Muslims

The toxic brew of paranoia and anti-Islam sentiments has wrecked lives of a vast majority in India. It has become customary to Muslim households that whenever a bomb blew, young Muslim boys and men were picked up. Many were acquitted after being left to rot in jail for years; while others still languish inside. Their lives ruined, their youth decayed and their families reduced to destitution for the crimes they never committed.

The same happened with the innocent Muslims who were arrested after Malegaon blasts in the year 2006. Nine innocent Muslims were arrested, one died in custody. After almost a decade they were acquitted as no evidence was found!

Allegations of a Collusion

SM Mushrif, former IG of Police Maharashtra, in 2016 while demanding that the erring officers should be booked immediately, alleged that the Intelligence Bureau and ATS officers were working in collusion with the Hindu terrorists since 2005. He also alleged that in order to protect the Hindu terrorists responsible for about 25 blasts, police deliberately arrested innocent Muslim youths and gave a different color to these terror attacks.

"The charge-sheet was a bundle of lies. As a police officer, I knew from the day one that what's going on was wrong," he said.

"The blasts that took place between 2001 to 2008 were part of a well-planned conspiracy. The IB (Intelligence Bureau) and ATS officers were not only aware of this plan but they were hand in glove with the Hindu terrorists," the former top cop said while addressing a public meeting in Malegaon.

And despite Swami Aseemanand’s shocking revelations back in December 2010 on the involvement of Hindutva terror in the blast, the main accused Sadhvi Pragya Thakur is given a clean chit, and charges were dropped against Colonel Purohit, and a few others.

It is not the case of a few rotten apples in the barrel, but a case of the barrel being fundamentally contaminated.

Further Miscarriages of Justice

Mumbai blasts doesn't stand alone – like Malegaon bombings, it stands united with thousands of other cases in a country, where the whole system is tailored-fit to suit a few. At times to satisfy the ‘collective conscience’ of the society, murder is validated – remember Afzal Guru, a businessman from Kashmir? who was executed on February 9, 2013 for the crime he never committed. Arundhati Roy, a writer and political activist wrote in her article: Contrary to the lies that have been put about by some senior journalists who would have known better, Afzal Guru was not one of “the terrorists who stormed Parliament House on December 13th, 2001” nor was he among those who “opened fire on security personnel, apparently killing three of the six who died.” (The writer was the BJP Rajya Sabha MP, Chandan Mitra, in The Pioneer, October 7, 2006.)

Even the police chargesheet does not accuse him of that. The Supreme Court judgment says the evidence is circumstantial: “As is the case with most conspiracies, there is and could be no direct evidence amounting to criminal conspiracy.” But then it goes on to say: “The incident, which resulted in heavy casualties, had shaken the entire nation, and the collective conscience of society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender.”

And Yakub Memon, a Chartered Accountant and younger brother of gangster Tiger Memon, whose case is related to Mumbai serial blasts in 1993, in yet another betrayal by the Indian state was hanged on 30th July 2015 in spite of the fact that his involvement in the blasts remains deeply contested. This case will always be remembered for its consistent distortion of law and evidence, denying Memon justice at every step of the legal process.

A Flawed System

It’s all about the survival of the fittest -- the continued existence of species who are best adapted to the theatrics of a corrupt system while others continuously become extinct. The best example to prove this is Narendra Modi – the perpetrator of Gujarat genocide in which thousands of innocent Muslims were killed, raised on to become the Prime Minister of India.

It is nothing less than a lampoon of the flawed system, and its working where the rights of individuals are forfeited; where their lives are made extinct; where the logic of guilty until proven innocent works; where they are made into a vehicle to serve everybody’s interests.

So, you see the match is already fixed between the politicians and their henchmen!

The Hope of Islam

In a world where humanity is overwhelmed by callousness, truth by malicious lies, righteousness by prejudice, and justice by injustice, Islam is the only dawning hope… If for a moment, we release ourselves from the traditional moorings of the West, and its definition of ‘Terrorism and Islam,’ maybe it would be easier for us to look at the direction which we are ignoring for a long time now. The direction most people prefer not to look at.

Whether it was TADA (Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act) or POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act), MCOCA or UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) – there can never be a justification for detaining innocent Muslims and acquiring illegal confessions. These misdeeds under the guise of any anti-terror law can neither be forgotten, nor forgiven. These laws aren’t prevention against any terror activities, but rather a Pharaohic weapon to crush and oppress the Muslims in India.

Read also: Hindu Extremists Demand Shutdown of 400-year-old Islamic School

Presumption of Innocence

Nineteen valuable years of someone’s lives are lost only because he is a Muslim. A Muslim whose religion believes in ‘Presumption of Innocence,’ where defendants are innocent until proven guilty. The Sharia’ah law treats the accused as innocent until their guilt is proved. Unlike in secular liberal democracies, where the accused is blackmailed, tortured, beaten, burnt, electrocuted, and is meted out inhumane treatment before releasing them for lack of evidence.

Furthermore, the Messenger of Allah, Prophet Muhammad (SAW) said: “The evidence must be submitted by the plaintiff and the oath must be delivered by the defendant who denies the charge.”

So, it is the duty of the plaintiff (the one who initiates the lawsuit) and not the defendant to provide evidence for his claims. As he SAW explained that the burden of proof is on the one making the claim. If he has no proof, yet makes an accusation, then the defendant can make an oath upon his position and in that manner have the accusation rejected by the Judge. This serves as evidence that the defendant is innocent until proven guilty.

One of the principles of the Islamic Judicial System is that it is better to set a guilty person free, than to make an innocent suffer.

And just think how innocents are subjected to myriad cruelties by the state only because they are Muslims? Their only crime is being born into a muslim family, and bearing a muslim name. Period.

  Global Terrorism Hysteria

India doesn’t stand alone. The hysteria of terrorism and Islam is being played worldwide. One can’t ascertain how many innocent Muslims are being held without trial in Guantanamo, Bagram and other private detention camps. A few months ago, the horrors of Sednaya Prison came to light after the fall of the Assad regime in Syria.

Read also: Mumbai Train Blast Acquittals After 18 Years of Suffering

A Universal Systemic Failure

All in all, the Mumbai blasts is a tearjerker story of a universally lopsided system that whenever a ‘bomb blast’ happens, the incompetent cops run for their credibility and the frenzied media splash it obediently. And in the aftermath, we witness grave miscarriage of justice. Is this how humans deserve to be treated? Who will compensate for their 19-year long ordeal? Who will pay for the ostracization of their families, children and relatives by the cruel society? Can anyone bring back the lives lost during the pending hearing of the appeal? Will they (the police) ever seek atonement for their sins? What action will be taken against the involved ATS officers?

All these questions still hang in the air! The state needs to remember these words of Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a writer, statesman and the first Education Minister of India, which he said on a charge of sedition:

“The authority of the courts of law is a weapon that can be used for justice and injustice. In the hands of a just government, it becomes the best means of attaining right and justice; but for a repressive and tyrannical government, there is no better weapon for wreaking vengeance and perpetrating injustice. Next to the battlefields, it is in the court rooms that some of the greatest acts of injustice in the history of the world have taken place. From the holy founders of religion to inventors and pioneers of science, there is no movement for piety or truth which has not been arraigned before the courts like criminals…. The list of injustices committed by courts is a long one. History has not yet finished singing elegies to such miscarriages of justice.”