: The father of Umar Khalid, a PhD scholar who is accused of organising an event protesting the hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, has urged his absconding son to surrender. Speaking to The Hindu , Syed Qasim Rasool Ilyas, expressed his concerns about his son “being on the run” as it would have a “negative impact” on his image.
“Wherever Umar is, I request him to surrender. We all are with him and we have faith in the judiciary,” said Mr. Ilyas. Strongly condemning the “anti-India” slogans raised at the event held on February 9, he said he is willing to accept any outcome, provided the due course of law is followed.
Mr. Ilyas said that he and his family feel “extremely unsafe and vulnerable” now. “On Friday, I received a call from some Ravi Pujari from Australia who gave me a death threat while asking about the whereabouts of Umar. He was asking if he has run to Pakistan and if so, his men would kill him. My three daughters have received hate mails and messages on social media,” he added. An FIR in this regard has been registered by him at the Okhla police station.
Recalling the last time he spoke to Umar, Mr. Ilyas said, “I had called him after watching him on a TV channel debate on February 10. I had asked him to come home straight away from there saying that I wanted to discuss the issue with him.” But, Umar had replied on the negative. “JNU is boiling and I need to be there,” he had told his father.
As they followed different ideologies, the father-son relationship was not really a smooth one. “He used to read Lenin, Marx and Che Guevara. As he grew up into a mature man he embraced communist ideology and I am a practising Muslim. So we had quite a lot of differences in terms of opinions,” said Mr. Ilyas.
Since the past eight years, he has been living away from home and used to visit “occasionally”.
At the same time, he wondered if his son was “scared” to come out, given the treatment meted out to JNU Students’ Union president Kanhaiya Kumar who is in judicial custody on sedition charges. “The government, police, media as well as the judiciary should create a conducive environment for Umar to surrender. After all, he is a young boy and seeing how Kanhaiya was thrashed, he must be terrified,” added Mr Ilyas, who is the president of the Welfare Party of India and was the chief of SIMI before it was banned.
He blamed the Modi-led government as well as the Delhi Police for “jumping the gun” and said that the matter should have first been sorted at the university level.
S.Q.R Ilyas, former chief of SIMI, says he has faith in judiciary, asks his son to surrender
