Time heals wounds. That is happening with Unani doctor Ibrahim Ali Junaid, one of the ‘victims of flawed investigation by police’ in the aftermath of Mecca Masjid blast reported on this day 10 years ago.
But, the return to the ‘normal life’ he is leading now was not that easy. He was coming out of Yakutpura railway station in September, 2007 when a battery of policemen rounded up him.
“You are being detained,” one of them said. “I was blindfolded, bundled into a vehicle and taken to an unidentified location after an hour of journey,” Mr. Junaid recalled.
Though the pains and scars had gone, he would never forget what followed for next few days. He and some other youngsters were paraded naked, beaten up and, given electric shocks forcing them to admit that they were responsible for the detonation of an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) in Mecca Masjid on May 18, 2017.
“I was in my second year of Unani medicine programme and just returned from Delhi having attended a seminar when they detained me,” said the Unani doctor. Despite his repeated pleas that he was innocent, the investigators wouldn’t pay heed to him.
After several days of torture in illegal custody, finally Junaid was presented in a court accusing him of criminal conspiracy to create disturbances. “Police unofficially told media that we were arrested in Mecca Masjid blast case, but actually that was not mentioned in the documents furnished in the court,” the Unani doctor recalled.
In year 2008, the court acquitted them of the charge leaving the police red-faced. Though that gave him and his family the much-needed relief, the false case continued to haunt him in the form of knocks on the doors by police for next three years.
Police would come to his house in Yousfain Colony of Chandrayanagutta whenever there are law and order-related incidents in any part of the city. They used to inquire with the hospitals he worked about his background and add the tag of terror suspect.
All that eventually came to an end with the then united Andhra Pradesh Government officially announcing ₹ 3 lakh compensation for the wrong done to him. Slowly, he returned to normalcy and attending to patients at his clinic near the house.
“Physical pain has gone but the scar of sad memory still remains,” he says. No one else should become a scapegoat in the hands of police like him is all that he hopes.
