By Uma Sudhir

I wondered if I would have been able to wear such a ready grin if I had been in Imran’s shoes. Terribly wronged by the system and there was no one to even say `sorry, we regret what happened’.

Imran was telling me he has been shortlisted by a multinational company after he got his B.Tech degree. But they would soon run a background check on him as part of routine procedure and then he knew he would draw a blank. “How am I to convince a multinational that I am not a terrorist when my own government is not willing to give me a clean chit ?” he asks me with a wry smile.

It was just about a week after the May 2007 Mecca Masjid blast in Hyderabad. Imran says he had just returned home after a friendly cricket match in the neighbourhood that evening when suddenly 5-6 vehicles loaded with armed policemen barged into his 2-room home in Bowenpally in Secunderabad and took him away. He says it was also so filmy that he remembers when he was being taken out of his house and saw men in uniform on rooftops nearby pointing guns in his direction, despite the panic and terror he felt, he felt amused as well. Could this really be happening or is this some kind of a joke, like he had seen on some TV shows? How can they think I am such a big terrorist, he had wondered.

Syed Imran Khan spent 18 months in Hyderabad’s Chanchalguda jail. This after undergoing torture to make him admit he was the mastermind behind the Mecca Masjid blast. “They have given me third degree. I was given electric shock on my private parts. It was so painful, I can’t even tell you how I managed.”

I remember at that time his mother had wanted me to accompany her to jail when she was visiting him so I could see firsthand the kind of injuries he had suffered.

Imran was not even given bail till he was acquitted in the case. “They said I had trained for 10 years in Pakistan. I was 22 then. So did I run away from home when I was hardly 12? Then how come I passed tenth class from Kendriya Vidyalaya here and went to Sultan Uloom college in the city? I had not even stepped out of Hyderabad and the police said I had been to Pakistan.”

At that time though no one would even listen to the logic of the story, he says. Imran was also working as a phone banking agent with ICICI even as he pursued his engineering degree. The bank link, it was said, had helped him `manipulate and channelise’ terror funds and his `technical’ knowledge had been used to `make/trigger explosives’.

The police had said that 100 kg of RDX had been brought into the city and it was suggested that it had been kept hidden for a few months inside Imran’s two-room home and that part of it was used to trigger blasts in the city. I remember reporting that it seemed implausible that a home visited everyday by dozens in the neighbourhood (Imran’s mother is a tailor) could be used to stash the explosive. The said RDX was never traced.

Imran says in August 2007, he was taken for narco tests to Bangalore. When he arrived at the lab, for the first time, he encountered dozens of media people and channels. He says, as he walked in, he remembers reading a flash on a channel that claimed that Imran had during narco tests`admitted’ to being the `mastermind’ behind the blast, whereas he was just about entering the premises and had not undergone any test. There was no one to listen to his objections and share his feeling of outrage.

What `linked’ Imran to what the police saw as `suspicious’ activity was that Shoaib Jagirdar, an uncle from Jalna had stayed overnight at Imran’s home a few months earlier along with one of his contacts, for who they had wanted to get a passport. Imran happened to have accompanied his uncle for `arranging’ the passport and still faces charges on the count.

Imran’s other `crime’ was that the socially popular young man took an active interest in event management. And one of his assistants was Kaleem, who was later credited with having brought about a change of heart in Aseemanand, while they were inside Chanchalguda jail, leading to a dramatic confession that changed the entire presumption about who was behind the blast in the Hyderabad mosque.

Despite the CBI giving Imran a clean chit, he spent 18 months in jail and was acquitted in the case where he was accused of a `conspiracy to wage war against the state’. But he still faces charges in the passport case. He was rusticated from college but persisted positively and managed to get his degree. But getting a good job is proving elusive because the police still tails him and the stigma won’t go away.

Now the Andhra Pradesh government has handed over upto three lakh rupees as compensation to youth like Imran wrongly implicated in the Mecca Masjid blast. Imran’s name should have been first on that list, he was probably the first among the youth to be picked up. Yet his name does not figure on the list and he has got no help, not even a `sorry’ from the government.

Imran’s mother says the same neighbours who had turned hostile and virtually wanted to hound them out of locality and their home after lmran was labelled a terrorist, will be the first to demand that the young man should be paid compensation. Imran was always popular in the locality and now they all know he is a real gem, his mother says proudly.

The minorities department secretary was empathetic and said a 3-level top committee of secretaries had cleared and recommended his name. Yet his name is not even in the waiting list of those to be paid compensation.

“My parents and family and I have suffered a lot because of all this. I am happy the government has come forward to pay some compensation, to correct a wrong. I don’t want any compensation or money. I only want them to give me a clearance certificate, a character certificate, so I can get a decent job and live a normal life. Is that asking for too much.” He is still wearing that gentle, endearing smile. I am afraid we should not push youth like him so much that the smile gets wiped off and bitterness and anger takes over.

Related posts by Uma Sudhir :

My name is Rayeesuddin and I am not a terrorist

Bumping into a `terrorist’