NEW DELHI, 23 July 2006 — Angry Muslim leaders claim their community is the target of a witch hunt by police investigating the Bombay train bombings last week which killed 183 people and wounded 800. They say Muslims are being targeted by authorities who have rounded up hundreds of people for questioning from different parts of the country although police deny Muslims are being singled out.
The crackdown follows investigators saying the attacks bore the hallmarks of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.
And some within India’s intelligence community reportedly suspect the blasts to be the handiwork of Muslims wanting revenge for sectarian riots in western Gujarat state in 2002 in which some 2,000 members of their community were killed.
Police said Friday they had arrested three people as part of the inquiry, the first since the July 11 blasts, but raids in Muslim-dominated pockets of India continue.
The apparent close scrutiny Muslims are coming under has not gone unnoticed by leaders of India’s 135 million to 140 million strong Islamic community. “Of course this is a deliberate targeting of Muslims,” said Imam Syed Ahmed Bukhari, the chief imam of India’s largest and most famous mosque — the Jama Masjid in New Delhi.
Bukhari’s views are echoed by Rahat Mehmood Choudhury, a Muslim leader from India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh.
“The investigating agencies are not being fair. There is (still) no evidence to suggest who carried out the blasts. But Muslims are being detained for questioning,” he said.
In Maharastra, of which Bombay is the capital, the police have rounded up hundreds of suspects but freed most after questioning to try to prevent further attacks and tensions in a city with a history of communal clashes.
Anees Durrani, a former member of India’s Haj Committee, said the Maharashtra police are “very biased against Muslims.”
“You can see that very plainly by the way the investigations are proceeding. Leaders of Indian Muslims have condemned the Bombay blasts and others before July 11. No one knows who carried out the blasts but the needle of suspicion is always pointed toward us,” he said.
In the northeastern state of Assam, police this week arrested six Muslims on suspicion of having links with groups planning attacks in the state.
But they were also being investigated for possible involvement in the Bombay blasts, police spokesman Rajen Singh said.
In neighboring Tripura, 39 people were detained for questioning including 11 from Maharashtra who said they were in Tripura to preach Islam. The 11 were interrogated for a week by special anti-terrorist officers and released after the Tripura government confirmed they were “genuine preachers” and “not involved in unlawful activities”.
The other 28 have also been released but remain under surveillance.
In the Andaman Islands, police this week rounded up 20 supposed Bangladeshi nationals and were questioning them for possible links with the Bombay blasts, Jaspal Singh, superintendent of police in the Andamans said.
Bombay’s joint commissioner of police Arup Patnaik said complaints of discrimination were not new to the force after a series of bombings in 1993 that left more than 250 dead was blamed on a nexus of underworld figures and militants.
He said round-up operations were continuing after the Bombay train blasts alongside the main probe but were not specifically targeting Muslims. “Certain areas have many Muslims staying there,” he said, but had no details on the religious make-up of those that had been picked up.
Zarar-ul Islam Khan, a prominent New Delhi-based Muslim leader who runs a website for Indian Muslims said: “Just because a few Muslims could be part of the attacks, it is unfair to criminalize the whole community.”
According to Khan, “If there are Muslims involved in the blasts, it could be due to the denial of justice in Gujarat and other such cases,” referring to the Gujarat riots four years ago.
The 2002 violence in Gujarat was triggered by the torching of a train compartment carrying Hindu activists — allegedly by a Muslim mob — in which 59 people were killed in Godhra. A probe by India’s Railway Ministry last year said the fire was caused by an accident.
