(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - One midnight in July 2001 special branch police picked up Wasif Haider, 29, a Muslim sales manager of an American multinational firm from his residence in the north Indian city of Kanpur.
They tortured him in custody for three days before arresting him on charges of terrorism. Eleven cases, including rioting, waging war against the state and ferrying arms and explosives for terror attacks, were slapped against him. Haider was a Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist trained in Kashmir and had been involved in a bomb attack in Kanpur in 2000 - police claimed.
But all charges against the man fell apart in the court when a judge refused to accept the confessional video and written statements of Haider, observing that while in police custody, he might have faced coercion. In the key Kanpur bomb attack case, the court observed that "none of the witnesses were able to establish" that Haider had a hand in the attack. The court acquitted him in all cases, but not before he had languished 8 years in jail.
His arrest on terrorism charges and being in jail for 8 years, until 2009, has ruined his life forever, Haider said.
"Quoting police sources, the media reported that I had confessed to carrying out the Kanpur bomb attack and being a Hizbul terrorist. But no one knew that in police custody I was forced to sign more than 150 blank sheets and was forced to speak before a video camera," Haider told DW.
The courts acquitted Haider, and practically trashed all police evidence as fabricated, he said.
"Yet society still identifies me as a terrorist because of a false campaign by the police for long years. My old employer refused to re-employ me after I was acquitted. All of my several job applications to different companies in the past 4 years have met with mysterious silence and I am facing a bleak future," he said.
Haider's case is not unique. In the past months rights groups have highlighted dozens of such cases involving Muslim youths who had been framed in terror cases and detained in jails for years before finally being acquitted.
Fast-track courts
Several members of parliament recently demanded a discussion on the matter in parliament. The MPs pointed out that the sluggish court system was a key reason behind the long and unjustified detention of a number of young innocent people.
Amid a massive outcry over the issue, last month Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured parliament that the government would soon introduce special fast-track courts for such terrorism-related cases.
Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde last month said the home ministry was in support of faster trials.
"I am also of the view that arresting and keeping innocent persons in custody knowingly is indeed a serious offence and the government is committed to ensuring strong action against the officers responsible in all such cases," Shinde told Minority Affairs Minister K. Rahman Khan in a letter.
While Shinde's letter did not mention a time frame for the creation of such courts, Khan said that the government was indeed serious to see such terrorism cases settled as fast as possible.
"If any section of the security agencies are vindictively framing the Muslim youths in the terror cases, it has to be punished. Any misuse of power in the name of enforcement of security will not be tolerated," Rahman said.
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