The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Give my son a fair trial, Imran's father pleads

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 30, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Give my son a fair trial, Imran's father pleads

Special Correspondent

Imran was arrested on suspicion of involvement in terrorism

Bangalore: "No Indian is above the law. All I am asking for is a fair trial for my son," says Shamsuddein Kota, father of Imran Jalaluddin, the suspected terrorist who is in police custody for his alleged involvement in the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) attack case. The 59-year-old father, who met a group of presspersons here on Monday, has come to Bangalore from Hazratbal in Srinagar to ensure that his son is not "convicted by the people and the police" without being given a chance to tell his side of the story in a transparent trial.

"I have come to see my son to find out how he is. The police have subjected him to narco-analysis thrice, and each time they say he has confessed something new," he says. Mr. Kota met Commissioner of Police Neelam Achuta Rao on Monday to seek permission to meet Imran. The police have given him the option of either meeting Imran in the police lock-up or later, when he is remanded in judicial custody.

Mr. Kota offers a version of events that led to Imran's arrest that is different from that of the police. While the police claim that Imran was picked up from a Bangalore-bound bus from Hampi (where he managed a handicrafts shop) on January 5, Mr. Kota says that Imran's friend in Hampi had clearly told him he was picked up by some unidentified men on December 28.

Mr. Kota admits that his son had, as a 16-year-old, gone to Muzaffarbad in PoK for arms training for six months in 1989. "It was the beginning of militancy in the Valley. Everyone was going across," he says. During that period the security forces raided his house regularly.

Mr. Kota says he sent Imran to Bangalore in 1991 to do a diploma course in a private polytechnic. On his return to Kashmir in July 1994, Imran was arrested again and kept in custody for 40 days. "He was cleared by a screening committee after it was convinced he had completely delinked himself from the militants," says Mr. Kota.

He was trying to carve out a new life at Hampi, says Mr. Kota.

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