Tehelka, May 31, 2008
Floundering for leads, the police is cracking down on hapless Bangladeshi immigrants, reports TUSHA MITTAL
IT IS 6am in Jaipur, the morning after a string of blasts ripped through the walled city. A police van drives up to a cluster of jhuggis around huge heaps of trash. In the next few days they will visit again, seven times. This is a densely populated Bengali settlement known as Galta Gate basti. Some are children of Bangladeshi immigrants who came to India during the 1971 war. Some are from Assam and Kolkata. Some don’t know anything about their origin.
Mahmood Kamroo Chaudhary was sleeping when men in uniform walked up to his hut. They asked him to head to the police station with them. “Why,” he asked. “Nothing to fear, you are not alone, we are taking people for questioning and will leave you in a few hours,” was the reply.
Five days after the blast, Chaudhary’s wife Parveen Begum is pacing up and down with her infant. Her husband is yet to return home. So are hundreds of others who were picked up from Bengali bastis across Jaipur.
She recalls her visit to the Galta Gate police station. “The police were shouting and beating them. We could hear the screams as they were being hit,” she says. “They tell him he is lying, that he is not from Assam but Bangladesh.” In Jaipur’s ground zero, Bangladeshis are terror’s new scapegoats.
Chaudhary’s parents came to India from Bangladesh, but Begum says he was born in Assam and has been in Rajasthan for the past 16 years. He has a PAN card, a valid licence and a ration card issued by Rajasthan authorities. The police haven’t asked Chaudhary for any papers and Begum is hesitant to present this evidence. “They will take it from me and burn it,” she says. “Then I will have no proof. The bombers did what they had to and left, now we are paying for it.”
Bangladeshi immigrant Marzina Begum’s 15-year-old son was taken in police custody after the blasts. When she visited him, he showed her marks on his body where he had been beaten.
There is another curious phenomenon. Throughout the city, heaps of rubbish lie uncollected and untouched. Very few trash pickers are visible. It is common knowledge here that most of the kabadi walas are Bangladeshis. What is not common knowledge is that ever since the blasts, they are petrified to venture out in fear of being spotted by the police.
A few days after the deadly blast killed 63 and injured 151, the pink city is bustling and tourists are easily spotted. The only visible scars are the bullet holes that pierced water tanks, concrete walls and even the strongest of metal surfaces. Candles and marigold flowers mark the places where victims died, where Kishan the batasha-wala sat when a cycle near him exploded. No policemen parade the streets or guard entry/exit points. The curfew has been lifted, and businesses continue as usual.
But behind the façade of normalcy, Jaipur has become a battleground for the politics of terror. The state’s BJP government and the UPA government at the Centre are already sniping at each other over a circular reportedly sent by the Centre asking the state to put illegal Bangladeshis in transit camps. Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil denies this. But state Home Minister Gulab Chand Kataria told TEHELKA, “We received circulars from the Centre on January 24 and April 25 asking us to put illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in detention centres. They said the state would have to bear the costs. It is not only Rajasthan’s problem. The Centre should help us but it is taking things casually.”
Rhetoric from the other side too. “My first reaction was that the government has failed to live up to the challenges. We were supposed to prepare for this after Ajmer,” says state Congress unit chief CP Joshi. Attacking the Vasundhara Raje government, he adds, “Why are you targeting Bangladeshi Muslims? Isn’t the intention a communal flare up?”
The Rajasthan government has formed a special task force to head the Jaipur blasts investigations. “We will not depend on anyone else,” CM Raje has said. One week after the blasts, no leads have emerged and the force appears clueless. Local papers reported that Sajid, a SIMI activist, is being interrogated in Udai village in Sawai Madhopur district. Sajid does not resemble any of the sketches released by the police. The sketches are now being redrawn. ADGP AK Jain confirmed this but said he cannot disclose why Sajid is being questioned. Other reports introduced the name of Abdul Karim Tunda, an accused in the 1992 Mumbai blasts and reportedly involved in the Bangladesh-based HUJI. They said Tunda was seen in Jaipur recently.
Sources say the police are looking for Abu Faisal, a SIMI activist from Indore. Faisal’s picture was released in local papers with a sketch. This sketch was drawn on the description of Satyanarayan Malpandi, owner of Santosh Cycle. TEHELKA approached him with the photo and Malpandi denied having ever seen the man.
DIG Saurabh Srivastava, who is a member of the Special Investigation Team, told TEHELKA that the modus operandi of the Jaipur blasts is exactly similar to the court blasts in UP, while the explosive device used in Jaipur resembles that used in the Hyderabad blasts. He said the Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh investigating agencies are working in collaboration.
BJP spokesperson Rajendra Rathore admitted that HUJI has been on the investigation radar. “We have clues that point towards HUJI,” said Rathore. But the only “clues” disclosed are five cigarette packs of Bangladeshi make, found at the Sanganeri Gate blast site, and the claim of shopkeepers that the cycle buyers spoke with Bengali accents.
Rathore said the police have been asked to crackdown on illegal immigrants. “Many give addresses in West Bengal, we have given the police 30 days to verify all addresses,” he said, estimating the number of immigrants to be more than 10,000.
One obvious problem arises. Current and past governments have helped many of these “illegal immigrants” get ration cards and voter ID cards. Mina Khatum of Galta Gate basti holds up her voter ID and cries out loud. “I have been here for 20 years. I was married here, and became a nani and a dadi here. Now they have made life hell for us. We came to this land years ago, that’s our only fault.”
THE CRACKDOWN has begun with more than 400 Bangladeshis being questioned in the last few days. But a visit to the Bangladeshi colonies is enough to realise that much more than questioning is taking place. Groping for clues, the police have kept hundreds in custody for days, without food and without explanation. IGP Pankaj Kumar Singh admitted that this is not the way things should be handled. “This needs to be checked. If it is happening, it is wrong,” he told TEHELKA.
Bagrana is Jaipur’s main Bangladeshi colony. Here people openly say they are from Bangladesh. In other neighbourhoods, people are terrified to own up to their roots.
After the blasts, the police set up a tent right outside the basti. They went up to the main masjid, took in two imams for questioning and announced on a loudspeaker, “We will take your photos. Until we finish our investigation you cannot leave.”
Daulat Khan is the basti chief. He faced the brunt of the police’s wrath as others ran away. “Isko bulao, usko bulao,” the police told him and when no one appeared, the beating began. Scared, Dulal is hesitant to say anything but his sister points out two broken teeth.
Three days in custody cost Mohammed Dulal of Baxawala basti Rs 1,500, the income he could have earned driving his auto. “We were in front and the police caught whoever came in sight,” he says. Dulal said he was interrogated by the police, kept in a room with 40 others and forced to accept that he is Bangladeshi.
“I told them my address and they said you are lying. If you want to make me Bangladeshi forcefully, that’s your wish, I replied” he says. “Just because we speak Bengali doesn’t mean we are Bangladeshi. They say they will cancel my ration card and take away my house. Dhamki dete hain we will leave you in Bangladesh. I’m not an outsider, my home is India. How can you throw me out?”
The irony is that Dulal lives in a government- subsidised house. He says Raje herself handed the house papers to him. Yet the police say his documents, including his ration card, are false. On May 20, Dulal’s wife Sara Khatum called TEHELKA to say the police have again taken him into custody. “Last night, the police came and took Dulal and many others. They beat him in front of my eyes. Fifty of us are sitting outside the jail now. Please help us.”
Four Bengali bastis spreads across Jaipur have the same story to tell. Daughters tell mothers to keep shut — they look at you with stony eyes seeped in distrust. But talk to the elder of them in Bengali and they begin to open up. Every single conversation ends with “please don’t get us into more trouble. If the police see this, they will beat our husbands even more.” For many in Jaipur, another kind of terror has just begun.
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