Rakib Altaf
SRINAGAR, Nov 11: Parents of a Kashmir university student have appealed to the prime minister of India for help in release of their son who they say has been falsely implicated for a New Delhi bombing six years ago.
“Honourable Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh: Release Kashmir University student-Muhammad Rafiq Shah”, reads an online petition through change.org website, signed by Mehmooda begum, mother of Rafiq Shah who has been lodged at the Tihar jail in New Delhi since late 2005.
Then a third semester student of Islamic Studies at the university of Kashmir, Shah was picked up by police on November 21 from his home. He has been accused of planting a bomb on a bus at Govindpuri area of Delhi on October 29, part of a series of bombings that day which killed at least 67 people and wounded more than a hundred.
In 2008 a Delhi court chargesheeted him along with Tariq Ahmed Dar – the prime accused – and five others for “entering into a criminal conspiracy to wage war against the country”.
But his family says Shah has simply been framed.
‘Flummoxed’
“Police says he carried the bomb blasts in Delhi. But we fail to understand how did he do it while he was in his class room at the university, here in Kashmir,” said a bedridden Mehmooda Begum.
“I appeal to Manmohan Singh and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to release my son who is innocent. He is our only hope in our old age.”
Shah’s Father, Muhammad Yaseen said the fact that his son was in Kashmir when the blasts in Delhi happened has been testified to by his fellow students, teachers and the university management.
“They have already testified it, that too through a written certificate that he was at the university on that day,” he said. “Now how can a person be at two place at the same time. I fail to understand this.”
Ironically, in 2006 Shah was given a clean chit by the then Commissioner of Police, Delhi as the narco-analysis test failed to prove that he was the one who planted the bomb in the DTC bus at Govindpuri.
“Delhi police has itself implicated some other people in the same blasts,” said Yaseen, referring to New Delhi-based dailies which reported about the police having cracked the case after confessions by Indian Mujahideen operatives.
He said Chief Minister Omar Abdullah had promised of his son’s release soon after the elections in 2009.
“He came to our area for campaigning during the parliamentary elections. I told him how my son has been wrongly accised. I also showed him the proof,” he said.
“But he made a promise which he didn’t fulfill.”
