WRONGLY ACCUSED IN BLAST EAGERLY AWAIT VERDICT

Several persons who were wrongly implicated in the Mecca Masjid blast are now eagerly awaiting judgement. They want to see if the families of the individuals who were killed and injured in the blast get justice.

The investigation agencies had earlier blamed some Bangladesh-based terror groups and arrested several people in a conspiracy case in the hope of cracking the Mecca Masjid blast case. Nevertheless, they were left red-faced when the truth came out. While about a 100 were picked up on suspicion of executing the blast, about 21 were charge-sheeted by the police. All of them were acquitted by the courts.

“Soon after the Mecca Masjid blast, Muslim youth were randomly picked and tortured at farm houses by a special team constituted to probe the case. The police initially believed it to be a handy work of a Muslim group,” recalled Lateef Mohammed Khan of Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee.

Among those who were falsely implicated was Mohammed Rayeez, who worked at a jewellery store in the city. “My family faced a social boycott. Later, when I was acquitted from the case people started talking to us,” he said.

Another one to get caught in the investigation was, Syed Imran Khan, who was charged with handing over 10 kilograms of RDX which was used in the Masjid blast. The police had detained them in private farm houses and tortured them, he recalled.