Full Text of the Nimesh Commission Report (PDF)-Hindi

On 23rd November 2007, several blasts took place at court premises in Varanasi, Faizabad and Lucknow. No one was killed but many people were wounded. Several Muslim youths were rounded up for the blasts. About a month after the blasts, the Special Task Force of UP Police on 22^nd December 2007 presented Hakim Tariq and Khalid Mujahid before the media in Barabanki district of UP. The police claimed the duo was arrested from the railway station in the district on the same day with huge arms and ammunition including RDX.

However, the family members of the duo and the villagers claimed the duo was picked about 10 days before and not in Barabanki. According to them, the state police picked Hakim Tariq on 12th December 2007 in Azamgarh and Khalid Mujahid on 16th December in Jaunpur. Many people had witnessed the picking, and a day after their picking the family had filed a complaint with the local police in Azamgarh and Barabanki. When the UP Police presented the duo as arrested in Barabanki on 22^nd December, the family members and villagers got infuriated, they came out on the streets to protest. People protested in Azamgarh and Jaunpur and demanded the then chief minister Mayawati to order an inquiry into the arrest of the duo. Succumbing to the public pressure, on 14^th March 2008 the chief minister constituted one-man RD Nimesh Commission to look into the claims of the police and the family members of the duo. About five years of inquiry, the commission submitted the report on 31^st August 2012.

To read full text of the report, click here: 

  

Findings of the Commission

“The arrest of Khalid Mujahid and Tariq Qasmi with objectionable items in the morning of 22nd Dec. 2007 in Barabanki looks doubtful and the statements of the witnesses of the prosecution cannot be believed fully,” said the commission in its report.

The commission recommended legal action against the officers who implicated the duo in the case. “Therefore, it is recommended that the officers and staff who played key role in the conspiracy and thus violated the laws should be identified and legal actions should be taken against them.”

However, the commission itself did not fix responsibility for the lapses on any particular officer citing the case being trialed in court.

“The above case is pending before the District Court, Barabanki, so at this level we cannot fix responsibility on any person involved in the incident,” said the commission.

The Commission also made 12 recommendations to the state government to check recurrence of such incidents.

“In a terror case, a gazetted officer out of Police department should be made witness to recovery,” recommended the commission.

“Interrogation of the accused should be recorded on video,” is another recommendation.

“Special Courts should be set up to hear such cases,” recommended the commission.

Courtesy: http://sanhati.com/ and http://muslimmirror.com  

Biased security agencies and the anger in Azamgarh on being labled 'atankgarh'

The Times of India

Escape from Azamgarh

Shobhan Saxena, TNN | Jul 24, 2011, 01.23am IST

Security agencies call it a "terror hub". But Azamgarh's children simply see it as the place they want to leave. Shobhan Saxena travels to the eastern UP town where education is the only way out

It's a sodden morning. As rain comes down in thick sheets, the road quickly turns into a muddy track. Drains clogged with garbage are overflowing on dug-up streets. A bunch of travellers, whose jeep is stuck in mud, sit under a tree for shelter. The town's bus stand is slowly sinking into a pool of sludge. The sprawling campus of the main college is empty and the schools are shut. The mosques, too, are desolate. The shops are open but there are no customers. In cubbyhole boxes near the bus stand, men sit amid their unsold goods. It seems the whole of Azamgarh has retreated into a shell to save itself from the downpour.

Azamgarh town has a population of two lakh. It has just two main roads, which run parallel to each other and are connected by a maze of narrow alleys and streets. The city, which has no centre and no periphery, is located around these streets. It's actually a jumble of half-broken, half-built houses and shops. On sunny days, the town is a stark picture of chaos. Now, with dark clouds thundering over it, the town's palpitating motion is in suspension mode. But the town has been quiet since July 13, the day three blasts ripped Mumbai's streets and left a heap of bodies. The very next day, a Rapid Action Force contingent — men in blue fatigues and bulletproof vests — did a flag march on Azamgarh's main roads. Then somebody claimed to have "spotted" special police teams in vehicles with dark glass. As rumours of anti-terrorist squads (ATS) from Lucknow and Mumbai looking for " Indian Mujahideen modules" hiding in Azamgarh spread like wildfire, the usual suspects — pickpockets, bike snatchers and other "bad characters" — quietly left town. The madrassas asked their students to stay indoors.

Azamgarh, tucked in an impoverished corner of eastern UP, may be quiet but it's seething with anger and revolting against the tag of 'atankgarh' (terror centre). "Why are they looking for suspects here? We don't produce terrorists," says Rafiq Ahmed, a shopkeeper in the Chowk area. The same sentiment is voiced in bazaars, streets and homes — there are no terrorists, no sleeper cells in this town or the villages around it. "Our boys just want to study and do well in life," says Dr Javed Akhtar, who runs a hospital on Faizabad Road.

In its packed alleys and pigeon-hole houses, education is everything and the hunger for it is visible everywhere. Every second wall in the town is covered with posters of "IIT/PMT/UPSC coaching centre". Huge billboards towering over the dysfunctional bus station display two young men in suits who "want to be engineers". On every electricity and telephone pole hangs a hoarding of an institution that claims to teach "how to speak English with confidence in 90 days". As you enter the town, big boards of "Dust to Crown Public School" — yes, that's the name — with photos of smiling children holding trophies welcome you. There are "computer training centres" operating out of decrepit garages and "national finance institutes" running from shiny shops in new, upcoming markets. And there are "mobile repairing centres" in ramshackle kiosks sitting under huge trees.

"Everybody wants a professional degree or skill because that's the only way they can get a job. There are no opportunities here and no industries either. The young are interested in pursuing courses that help them get some work outside this town," says Ghyas Asad, principal of Shibli National College where more than 10,000 students study.

It's admission season here. A few boys and girls are anxiously hanging around Shibli's beautiful green campus, seeking admission in various courses offered by the college. But their dreams lie elsewhere. "We need a graduation degree to appear in various competitive exams, but it's not enough to get out of this town. I want to get a professional degree and leave Azamgarh. There is no future here and now we are being called terrorists," says Shahid Mohammad, 18, who has joined a coaching class for the engineering entrance exams.

Coaching is big business in this small town. Every day, boys and girls from neighbouring villages come here on their bicycles to attend classes at various tuition and training centres. Rafiya, 20, takes a bus from Sarai Mir to Azamgarh five days a week. She's taking spoken English lessons. The girl has heard about an aviation training academy in Varanasi and she hopes to join it one day. Her friends have been talking about a call centre coming up in Varanasi. Like the boys, they also dream of economic freedom. "I want a better life for myself and my family. I also want a job which brings us self-respect and decent money," says the student, who lives in an area from where many young men have been picked up for suspected terror activities.

Interestingly, people of this town have been going out for more than 100 years. Initially, they travelled to places like Malaysia and Singapore. In the 1960s and 70s, they went to Bombay. Then came the great Gulf rush. Those who managed to get out of the ghettos not only made a life for themselves, but also pumped money into the town. With the state almost absent from all spheres of life, even construction of a road divider becomes an event. It's the remittances from migrants which are sustaining and fuelling growth here. This money is the local people's lifeline.

Every street here has a Western Union money transfer counter; there is an STD/ISD booth in the remotest corners of the district, and even fruitsellers in the local market carry recharge coupons for mobile phones. "Almost every family has someone working outside. It's because of money sent by them that the Muslim community has made some progress in education and jobs," says Umair Siddique, a researcher at Shibli Academy. "Now our boys go out for professional education and good jobs and not for menial work as they did earlier."

The money is visible in certain pockets here and there. In a town where every government building, except the deputy commissioner's colonial bungalow, looks like a relic, there are some swanky new ones. Most of these are private schools, hospitals, and madrassas. Local intelligence officials talk of Salafi winds sweeping the area because of financial and moral support from the Gulf. But the people see the madrassas as educational institutes, particularly those which also provide some vocational training. "There are only a few local boys in these madrassas. Most of them are from Bihar, Bengal and other states," says Asad. Deprived of education and food in their villages, these boys have made the madrassas of Azamgarh their home.

Azamgarh is a lost town. Nothing works here. The power supply trips several times in a day. Running water in taps is not guaranteed. Government schools are falling apart. There is no government college here. And there are no jobs for the young.

But they have plenty of time and energy. Even on a rainy day, some young men in saffron shorts and T-shirts are having a party on the road. They are a group of Kanwariyas on their way to Varanasi to collect Gangajal.With "Ishq ka manjan" from the film "Yamla Pagla Deewana" blaring from loudspeakers mounted on a truck sponsored by Pinku DJ, the men dance provocatively at Chowk, a Muslim area. A few boys in white skull caps watch the procession nervously from a window. Tension runs high every year during the Kanwariya season here. There have also been clashes with followers of BJP leader Yogi Adityanath, who has been spitting venom against the minority community.

For those who want to avoid trouble and a mention in the police records, there is only one shot at redemption: the escape from Azamgarh.

Azamgarh: Traitors without trial & hanging of a community

The Telegraph, 27 september 2008

Traitors without trial & hanging of a community
- UNPROVEN TAINT LEAVES AZAMGARH’S MUSLIMS ALIENATED

by SANKARSHAN THAKUR

Maulana Ashfaq Ahmed at Saraimir’s Madarsa-e-Tul Islah. Picture by Sankarshan Thakur

Azamgarh, Sept. 26: There’s a disquieting war in the works here, arrived from afar and unpacking its wares across unmindful townships and qasbahs.

It is erecting frontiers village after village and installing rabid little armies across them. It is spewing new poison as it rolls on and is churning up fires that have left Azamgarh’s syncretic history in an ominous shambles. It is a war that extant prejudice is waging on past pride.

The liberal Shibli Noomani and Rahul Sankrityayan lie discarded in its ruinous wake, the exhaust has gagged the song that Kaifi Azmi sang. Abu Salem, and the alleged flowering of his progeny, have become the preferred standard of discourse — it is seeding the countryside with the prospect of a frightening outcrop.

“Sab terrorist hain… (expletive deleted), desh ke dushman, asli rang mein aa gaye… (expletive deleted),” says Maniram Pandey, a schoolteacher at Pharia, a crossroads hamlet short of Azamgarh. “Kas ke lagaam nahin lagi to gaon-gaon mein tabahi macha denge. Chhoriye Azmi-Kazmi, Abu Salem ki aulad ki baat keejiye. (All of them are terrorists, enemies of the nation… if they are not reined in, they will set off a blaze across the villages. Forget the Kaifi Azmis, talk about Abu Salem and his children.)”

The broad brush is being brandished hard to apportion indiscriminate taint; it has left the Muslims fenced in and alienated at home.

“Even protesting innocence is not granted us anymore,” says Obaidul Rehman, an elderly Saraimir farmer. “Even seeking fair trial becomes firm proof of our complicity in crime. Where are we to go, who are we to ask? For police, we are all part of the big conspiracy; for the politicians, we have become too hot to handle. We have become our own spokesmen and nobody is listening.”

The usual suspects of secular politics — the Congress, Samajwadi Party and the ruling BSP — have fallen strangely silent. The BJP, meantime, is exulting in daily vindications, as much here as across the country, gleeful that it has discovered in “Islamic terror” a new energy resource.

“We have been warning all along,” says Bhadresh Singh, a local Sangh pracharak. “Now the country is realising at its own cost, these people need to be taught a tough lesson.”

Singh’s cry is getting free run of the field. “There is urgent need for secular parties to come forth and stop this sweeping canker,” pleads Ashraf Qazi, an SP votary. “Political leaders have to moderate the distinction between a handful of so-called miscreants and the hanging of a whole community. But where are they?”

They are all nervously perched on the fence, twiddling with the vote calculus, their secular convictions enfeebled by the terrors of fickle votebanks.

“It’s true we can’t decide,” an Azamgarh Congressman sheepishly admits. “Abhi maamla bada fluid hai, Hindu vote ka bhi to khayal rakhna hai, chalen jaayen Muslamaanon ki tarafdari karne is garam mahaul mein aur suli pe chadh jaayen? (Things are very fluid at the moment, we have to bother about the Hindu vote too. Shall we rush in to the Muslims’ rescue in this surcharged atmosphere and get hanged?)”

But the Congress isn’t the only party gripped by perilous confusions. The SP is at best mumbling inchoately and the BSP is in proactive abdication. Azamgarh’s man in the Lok Sabha, Akbar Dumpy Ahmed, hasn’t once sought news of home since the Jamianagar encounter and its unsettling aftermath. His troubled constituents are guessing, probably rightly, that following delimitation, Dumpy is probably eyeing another seat; Azamgarh stands dumped.

Its anxieties, though, eddy portentously. Allegations, no more, ringing out of Delhi and Mumbai and Ahmedabad have become ruse to post hurried and harsh judgement: Musalmaan, traitor, lumped with unproven guilt and unprocessed bias. He labours in the Gulf and wires back his earnings; the Western Union outlet his family goes to becomes a signpost of dirty money. He paints his mosque and his patriotism gets stained. He raises funds to build a charitable hospital and it becomes added evidence of dubiously gotten wealth. He sets up a PCO and he is in conversation with the Devil himself. He builds a school and it becomes the eruption of another seminary of terror.

The madarsa has long been the maligned eye of sectarian storms. Saraimir’s Madarsa-e-Tul Islah is no exception. It’s an institution dating back more than a hundred years, set in a sprawling expanse of groves and flower-beds. Ashfaq Ahmed, the 76-year-old rector, sits solitary in the shade of an open, high-domed gazebo. He wears the calm of a wizened man, but the tumult rippling around hasn’t left him untouched.

“I have spent all my life here, as a student, then as a teacher,” he says. “Hundreds of thousands of us have lived here for ages and ages. We’ve fought wars for freedom, we’ve struggled for independence, we’re stakeholders in the destiny of the country, and suddenly we are being told we are traitors. On what ground? By who, with what legitimacy? Whose country is this now? Not ours?”

He isn’t arguing the boys from Azamgarh are all above guilt, but he isn’t allowing anyone else to pass judgement on them either. “We’ve been allowed to believe we have a Constitution and laws. How can the police, and even you the media, call people guilty without affording them trial, everybody is innocent until otherwise proved, isn’t it? What you are doing is tearing this earth apart, it’s my earth too, don’t forget, I daily labour to spring those flowers you see.”

Not very far from this madarsa is a village called Lamhi, home to Munshi Prem Chand, who wrote a once-celebrated story called The Temple and the Mosque in which maulana and mahant together dictate the end to communal disruption and repair broken fences.

Prem Chand’s craft, we are reliably told, represented reality. Today, you might want to dismiss that as figment of his fantasy. Rest in peace, Prem Chand, there’s a war rumbling over your memory, mahant and maulana are back at the broken fence, this time dealing blows.

Communal Violence after rally of Yogi Adityanath. . .

The Hindu
September 12, 2008

Azamgarh DIG, SP suspended

Special Correspondent

LUCKNOW: Five days after communal violence in Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh claimed the life of one person, the Mayawati government on Thursday suspended Azamgarh Range DIG Abhimanyu Tripathi and SP V.K. Garg, on charges of dereliction of duty and ignoring directives for making effective police arrangements. Violence and arson erupted in Azamgarh after the convoy of BJP MP from Gorakhpur, Yogi Adityanath, was attacked. Earlier the MP’s supporters had raised objectionable slogans in the Muslim-dominated Takiya locality of the eastern UP town.

The MP was going to address the ‘Virat Hindu Chetna Rally’, organized by the Hindu Yuva Vahini in the local DAV College.

Addressing a press conference, Director General of Police Vikram Singh and Principal Secretary, Home, Kunwar Fateh Bahadur said Mr. Adityanath has a past of making objectionable speeches.

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The Hindu
8 September 2008

Vehicle torched, bus, train movement hit during bandh

Lucknow (PTI): Activists of the VHP and other Hindu outfits on Monday hit the streets torching a jeep and blocking trains during a bandh in eastern Uttar Pradesh to protest the attack on BJP MP Yogi Adityanath which left one dead and six injured.

VHP and Hindu Yuva Vahini cadres toched a jeep in Ballia district and forced closure of shops, raising pro-Hindutva slogans.

The movement of both roadways and private buses as well as trains was affected in Ballia and Gorakhpur districts where bandh supporters tried to stop trains.

All schools and colleges remained closed in Azamgarh.

Altogether 226 preventive arrests were made in apprehension of trouble during the bandh, ADG law and order Brij Lal said, adding that those arrested were later released on personal bonds.

Shops and markets remained closed in Gorkahpur, Deoria, Ballia, Varanasi, Mau, Azamgarh and Jaunpur districts where police personnel were deployed in strength after Sunday's incident sparked tension in the region.

In Lucknow Bajrang Dal staged a protest demonstration before the Vidhan Sabha, reports said.

Meanwhile, two borthers have been arrested in connection with the killing of one Maniullah in the violent clashes sparked off by the attack on the MP's convoy, the ADG said.

Piyush Singh and Dhiraj Singh, who are brothers, were arrested with a prohibited 32 bore pistol from the scene of yesterday's clashes, he said adding that altogether 13 people have been held in connection with Sunday's violent incidents.

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