Other States - Rajasthan   

PUCL demands release of Shahbaz

JAIPUR: The People’s Union for Civil Liberties has demanded immediate release of Shahbaz Ahmed – claimed by the Rajasthan police to be the prime suspect behind the May 13 Jaipur serial blasts which left many people dead – while affirming that the Lucknow-based former Students Islamic Movement of India member had been wrongly framed in the case.

The Rajasthan police claimed to have cracked the serial blasts case after arresting 32-year-old Shahbaz with the help of the Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) of the Uttar Pradesh police from the posh Aminabad locality in Lucknow on August 25. He is at present lodged in judicial custody here in Jaipur.

Director-General of Police K. S. Bains had announced that Shahbaz was the “main link” in planning, conspiring and executing not just the Jaipur blasts but also terror attacks in five States. He was consistently referred to as the mastermind of serial blasts till the recent Batla House encounter in Delhi and the arrest of alleged Indian Mujahideen operatives in Mumbai and Pune.

A fact-finding team of PUCL’s UP unit and People’s Union for Human Rights has claimed that Shahbaz – son of a carpet manufacturer and a “struggling middle class entrepreneur” raising his family on his daily earnings – was innocent and the police had failed to collect concrete evidence to prove his complicity in the blasts.

PUCL Rajasthan unit general secretary Kavita Srivastava, releasing the report here, said the fact-finding exercise had revealed a story of Shahbaz’s life different from what the State police were claiming. “It raises serious questions about the way the young man has been painted as the mastermind of blasts,” she added. The police picked up Shahbaz from his computer and career consultancy centre in Lucknow after being tipped off about him during the interrogation of alleged Ahmedabad blasts masterminds Abu Bashar and Sajid Mansuri. He was also stated to be a successor to SIMI chief Safdar Nagori after the latter’s incarceration.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

27 killed in Deeg fireworks factory explosion
PUCL demands release of Shahbaz
Woman, children charred to death
Huge support in Rajasthan

Copyright © 2008, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu