Of innocent prisoners, lynching incidents and Kashmir

From the last few hours I have been reading this latest book on the situation of the prisoners. In fact, the very title of this book – ‘Innocent Prisoners. Begunah Qaidi. Stories of Muslim Youth Falsely Implicated In The 7/11 Train Blasts and Other Terror Cases’ – relays the stark reality of those sitting implicated and imprisoned.

This book has been authored by one of the former prisoners, Abdul Wahid Shaikh, who was himself implicated in the 11 July 2006 Mumbai train bombings case. He was imprisoned for nine years, till he was declared innocent and acquitted. And in this book he has put down his experiences in the jail and that of his fellow prisoners, at the hands of the police and investigating agencies and jail staff. In fact, the 500 hundred pages to this book are laced with facts, complete with specific dates and names and the particular instances.

This former school teacher who was teaching in a Mumbai school has put down each little detail of the prison life and the aftermath that follows. In fact, a film producer is said to have been so taken up by this man’s grit that a full-fledged feature film is near completion on the life and times of Abdul Wahid Shaikh.

After all, this former prisoner has much to offload, in that absolutely stark blatant way. To quote from the preface to this book, “Despite being innocent when we were arrested in the 7/11 blast case, for several days we did not understand what exactly was going on with us. We thought the police has arrested us mistakenly and would release us soon. But as the days went on, our hopes started fading away…”

To further quote the opening lines from the first paragraph of the very first chapter to this book: “We all know very well that the political masters have always used the police for their vested interests in our country. Unfortunately, the police have become so uncontrollably strong that today they have become totally unquestionable. The nation has practically become a police state…How will the State terrorism end? When will it end? There is need to seriously think about this. As long as we do not think of ending state terrorism, actual peace and progress will remain only a dream. The sooner the government realizes it, the better it is for the nation.”