The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : CoD harassing Muslims: NGOs

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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

CoD harassing Muslims: NGOs

Special Correspondent

‘Some officers hell-bent on maligning entire community’

Raid on Hassan institution questioned
‘Scores of Muslim youth held without evidence’

— Photo: V. Sreenivasa. Murthy

Voicing concern: Mohammed Saad Belgami, Jamaat-e-Islam-Hind leader (right), addressing a press conference in Bangalore on Thursday.

BANGALORE: Taking objection to the visit of the Corps of Detectives (CoD) team to a Muslim educational institution near Hassan for terror investigation, the Federation of Muslim NGOs on Thursday alleged that some CoD officers were “hell-bent on maligning the entire Muslim community.”

Addressing presspersons here, Mohammed Saad Belgami, Jamaat-e-Islam-Hind leader and federation representative, alleged that though CoD did not have enough evidence, its officials had raided the Hassan institution and interrogated the principal and students.

The CoD team had interrogated some students, including those studying in Class V and VII, shown them a few photographs and asked them whether they could identify the persons in the photographs. The police had threatened to book cases against the students, alleged Dr. Belgami, a Bangalore-based surgeon.

When his attention was drawn to the CoD’s findings that several calls were made from the principal’s mobile phone to that of Yahya Kammukutty, the arrested terror suspect, Dr. Belgami said mere telephone call details should not be basis for the police to raid an educational institution. The police should have conducted the investigations more “discreetly” by summoning the principal and students to some other place, he said.

Asked why the CoD had raided only one particular Muslim institution while there were hundreds of such institutions in Karnataka, he said it could be the beginning and many more institutions could come under the scanner subsequently.

“The CoD has officially or otherwise arrested hundreds of Muslim youths in many parts of the State without prima facie evidence and has interrogated many without any basis. In Bangalore, Hubli, Gulbarga, Raichur and other places, many Muslim youth, because of this harassment and insecure environment, have fled their homes,” Dr. Belgami said.

“Some CoD officers involved in investigation are determined to harass the Muslims in their effort to please fascist forces. Their behaviour clearly shows that they are more interested in creating hatred towards Muslims and vitiating the atmosphere in the State than in finding out the truth. Karnataka has become a police state rather than a civil state,” he alleged.

Quoting some media reports, Dr. Belgami said senior police officials had repeatedly stated there was no evidence of any terrorist entity being active in Karnataka and that the police had not been able to trace any evidence to link any of the arrested Muslim youth with any terrorist group.

“All previous investigations have always proved that Muslims of Karnataka have not been involved in terror activity, be it Mohammed Haneef or many others who were picked up by police after the attack on the IISc. and London bombings,” he said.

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