The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has taken serious note of the negligence by the Director General of AP Police V. Dinesh Reddy in submitting a detailed report about the suspicious death of Abdul Razaq Masood, a terrorism accused, in October 2012.
Through an official notice dated January 1, the NHRC has issued a reminder to the DGP, and gave two months’ time for the submission of the report. Accordingly, the report should be filed by March 5 this year.
Abdul Razaq Masood, hailing from Nizamabad, allegedly committed suicide in his one-room tenement at Mehdipatnam in October last.
He had been one of the accused in the Dilsukhnagar Saibaba Temple blast case of 2002.
He was also shown as accused in the cases pertaining to the terror attacks in Mumbai and at American Cultural Centre in Kolkata. The CID picked him up from Delhi airport in 2005, after he had arrived from Iran, and after two years in prison, he was released on bail in 2007.
Police involvement suspected
Mr. Masood’s relatives and civil liberties groups including the city-based Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee (CLMC) refuted the suicide claim, and suspected the hand of the police in his death.
The NHRC had taken note of the fact finding committee report by CLMC, and initiated a case in October, 2012 to probe into the matter.
In this regard, the DGP had been asked to submit a detailed report about the incident. However, no report was filed by the next hearing which was on January 1, 2013, prompting the commission to issue a reminder.
General Secretary of the CLMC Lateef Mohammed Khan criticised the inaction of the police and asked for a free and fair enquiry to be conducted into the incident.
