ATS Ruins the life of Samad And Many More: Does Anyone Take Notice?

The release of Abdus Samad by court in arms seizure case is a slap over ATS which had arrested him allegedly in connection with Pune Blast but before the court he was produced for supplying arms. Common Indians question whether investigating agencies arrest a person first and then decide in which case he can be trapped.

At last Bibi Raihana took a sigh of relief. A session court in Mumbai granted bail to her innocent son Abdus Samad but it could not save him from being tainted as a ‘terrorist’. Samad is not the only person to face such a situation. He is but an addition to the long list of Muslim youth implicated by police in terror charges and then released by court due to absence of evidences against them.

Abdus Samad, 22, was arrested by Maharashtra ATS on his way back home from Dubai at Mangalore airport on May 24, obviously in connection with the Pune German Bakery blasts.

Give Suitable Compensation To Acquitted Muslim Youth: Jam'iat

Jami’at-e-Ulama Hind has demanded that Muslim youth acquitted of terror charges should also be allotted a suitable compensation.
As a part of the probe in the 2007 Makkah Masjid blasts, the CBI has announced a reward of Rs 10 lakh for anyone providing leads to the arrest of Sandeep Dange and Ramchandra Kalsangra. Jami’at said that this reveals who is behind the blast in which Muslims were arrested initially.
“Youth from the minority communities are put in jails and are punished for what they never did. They are also subjected to mental torture. Though the youth have been released after two to three years, they are yet to recover. They must be given monetary compensation,” said Jami’at president Arshad Madani adding that the government has agreed to give Rs 40,000/- in compensation for some youth but “this is a clear mockery with the innocent. They must be given at least Rs 10 lakh compensation to enable them to lead a respectable life.”
Jami’at repeatedly had tried to draw the attention of the people in power towards the mischievous acts of the communal elements but the investigating agencies did not stop this one sided probe. By the time Hemant Karkare unveiled these elements, Muslims had undergone irreparable loss, Madani added.



Just after the arrest, the Maharashtra ATS was reported to have claimed that with the help of the CCTV images installed outside German Bakery it had arrested one of the masterminds behind the Pune blast. Media portrayed him as the mastermind.

Nevertheless, the ATS never booked him on charges related to the February 13 bombing of Pune which killed 17 people. According to The Hindu, during the several hours of questioning ATS could not abstract a confessional statement from Samad about his involvement in Pune blast.

While the Maharashtra Home Minister Mr. R R Patel had clarified that Abdul Samad was in no way connected with the Pune Blast case, the statement of our union Home Minister Mr. P Chidambaram was astonishing. He not only declared Samad the main accused in the blast but also lauded the breakthrough by police.


Just after the arrest, the Maharashtra ATS was reported to have claimed that with the help of the CCTV images installed outside German Bakery it had arrested one of the masterminds behind the Pune blast. Media portrayed him as the mastermind.

“I compliment ATS Maharashtra, the Pune Police and Central agencies on apprehending the prime suspect within hundred days of the incident,” Mr. Chidambaram said. This was yet another irresponsible statement by Chidambaram after Batla House encounter. Even the investigating agency did not say with surety that Samad was faintly connected with the Pune blast.

It seems as if ATS had arrested him without any evidence and when circumstances did not allow trapping him in Pune blast—the family of Samad affirmed, and with proofs, that he was at home to attend a marriage ceremony the day blast had taken place in Pune— it reportedly charged him in a 2009 arms seizure case.

The investigating agency said it wanted to question him in connection with the recovery of small arms from Mumbai's Byculla area last year--weapons police suspect were intended to attack lawyers linked to the defence of suspects linked to a bombing campaign by the Hindutva terror group Abhinav Bharat.

On August 5, 2009, the Mumbai police had arrested three persons, Haji Irfan, Abdul Shaikh and Suleiman Patel from a hotel with unauthorised arms. Abdus Samad was alleged to have supplied arms to them. However, Samad’s lawyer Mubin Solkar has revealed that Samad’s name neither appeared in the main FIR regarding the case nor was it mentioned in any of the chargesheets filed by the ATS in the court. Solkar also informed that even in the remand applications that were filed later, Samad's name had never been mentioned even if the ATS claimed that the main accused had named him.

A Mumbai sessions court recently issued its verdict that Abdus Samad was in not found involved in arms seizure case. In his judgement over the case while acquitting Samad in the arms seizure case, additional sessions judge A L Pathan observed that there was no evidence against Samad and that even the ATS had never shown Samad as a wanted accused in the 2009 arms seizure case.

If Samad was not arrested in connection with the Pune blast, as it is being portrayed now, why did the Maharashtra DGP D Sivanandhan state, after his bail, that ATS probe into the German Bakery blast had gone wide off the mark? What Sivanandhan added also reveals the methods our investigation agencies are adopting. He said that the “ATS will have to study the case properly, collect evidence in a scientific manner and then identify the group behind the blast.”

The arrest and then honourable acquittal of terror charges is not specific to Abdus Samad only. Unfortunately, police and investigating agencies have born a mentality that culprits behind every wrong doing are only Muslims. The irresponsible statement by P Chidambaram and the projection of media Samad as the prime accused in the Pune Germany blast testifies to this state of mind.

If Samad was not arrested in connection with the Pune blast, as it is being portrayed now, why did the Maharashtra DGP D Sivanandhan state, after his bail, that ATS probe into the German Bakery blast had gone wide off the mark? What Sivanandhan added also reveals the methods our investigation agencies are adopting. He said that the “ATS will have to study the case properly, collect evidence in a scientific manner and then identify the group behind the blast.”

This statement from the Director General of Police well reveals that the ATS, instead of looking for evidence, using forensic methods or the internationally approved methods of investigation did the easiest thing. They simply made the arrest of Abdus Samad based on their table work.

It seems as if Abdus Samad, in this whole story, had to pay the price for being a brother of Riyaz and Yasin Bhatkal, alleged IM operatives. In 2008, too, Samad had come under Karnataka Police scanner. The police had investigated him extensively after two IM bomb-making units were discovered reportedly in Vitthalamakki and Hakkalamane. The police wanted to know whether he had any knowledge of the networks run by his brother. Eventually, however, he was cleared of suspicion.

Prior to Abdus Samad's visit to Dubai, the Bhatkal and Bangalore police had repeatedly summoned him to the police station to enquire about his brother, Ahmed Yasin. Abdus Samad had completely co operated with the police officials and had provided all the necessary details about his brother, each time he was called over to the police station. Abdus Samad had even taken clearance from the police before he had left to Dubai.

Yet on his return from Dubai he was arrested for terror charges by Maharashtra ATS. Some media reports have even called him a suspected local supporter to the perpetrator of 26/11 Mumbai terror attack.

Now Abdus Samad has been acquitted because his family was produced convincing evidence that he was at home and not in Pune when the blast had taken place. But what about the families of many other victims of police prejudice languishing in jails under terror charges? Why do we not make the police responsible for wrongly trapping innocents in terror charges?
By A.Hameed Yousuf