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Jaipur medico let off by police

Special Correspondent

JAIPUR: The Rajasthan police have let off medical graduate Abrar Ali, who was picked up from his hostel room at Sawai Man Singh Medical College here on August 16, after failing to establish his links with Sajid Mansoori, who the Gujarat police claim is one of the masterminds behind the May 13 serial blasts in Jaipur.

The 27-year-old medico was kept in the custody of Special Investigation Team (SIT) for six days and grilled about Sajid’s visit to his room and movements in the city a day before the bomb blasts. Sajid reportedly dined with Dr. Ali and spent one night at the room.

The SIT released Dr. Ali on Friday evening after getting convinced that he knew Sajid by his fake name Salim and did not have any knowledge about his plans or activities. Another acquaintance, Taufeeq from Kota – the native town of Dr. Ali – accompanied Sajid during his visit to the city.

Yet another goof-up

The police dropped Dr. Ali at the Senior Boys’ Hostel of S.M.S. Medical College amid increasing pressure from the civil rights groups, which have accused the SIT of unleashing a witch-hunt against educated Muslim youths on the pretext of probe into the blasts. Dr. Ali’s case has been cited as yet another goof-up by police during the past three months.

Dr. Ali feared, while interacting with reporters here on Saturday, that his career would be adversely affected by his police detention. The young intern, preparing for post-graduate entrance exam, said he underwent a tremendous stress during his incarceration but added that police did not torture him in the custody.

The medico affirmed that his modest background – his father is a vegetable vendor in Kota – helped him take his detention in his stride. “I succeeded in convincing my interrogators that fanatics would never be able to mislead educated professionals like me. The State agencies must perform their duty without prejudices against minorities.”

Anxious relatives of several other detainees also gathered at Muslim Musafirkhana here on hearing about Dr. Ali’s interaction with the media. They alleged that police were acting with bias and were blindly believing the claim of their counterparts in Gujarat of having cracked the Ahmedabad blasts case to work on the leads provided by the latter.

The latest detentions made by the SIT are those of a tailor from Kota, Munawwar Khan, and a printing press owner from the same town, Zafar Mohammed. The police are reportedly working on the presumption that some SIMI functionaries hatched a conspiracy for the Jaipur bombings with the complicity of local youths in the Kota region.

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