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I remember I was among the first to reach the scene after the blast
in May 2007. The police picked up and took into custody nearly one
hundred young Muslims. In many cases, the families were not even aware
till much later where the youth were being kept and questioned. It was
as though the investigators were hoping that questioning so many would
yield them some leads. There were allegations of torture, of people
being coerced to give confessions. Subsequently, they were booked, not
for the Mecca Masjid blast case but in several other random cases of
conspiracy or watching videotapes of Gujarat with the alleged intention
of creating trouble.Then came Aseemanand's confession in a very
dramatic turn of events. Tales of how he had met Abdul Kaleem inside
jail did the rounds. Kaleem had been allegedly picked up for a crime he
did not commit. Aseemanand is said to have had a change of heart and
confessed. That too was later retracted. The idea of 'Hindu terrorism'
surfaced at that point. In the course of a botched-up investigation,
witnesses turned hostile and now 11 years later, all the accused have
been acquitted due to lack of evidence.
Not only do the people not
have any closure about who bombed the Masjid, they will lose faith in
the entire justice system because of a possibly shoddy investigation and
inability to collect material evidence. It calls to question the way
the investigation was conducted and the trial proceeded. To say now that
there is nothing called 'Hindu terror' is to send out a message that
terrorists in India come from only one community. This is a massive
setback for the premier terrorism investigation agency in the country,
the NIA. It puts a question mark on the quality and integrity of the
agency.
https://theprint.in/talk-point/talkpoint-mecca-masjid-blast-is-there-a-pattern-to-hindu-terror-acquittals-or-has-justice-prevailed/50084/
