All-India Milli Council general secretary M. Manzoor Alam has written to Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram protesting against harassment and religious profiling of Muslim youth.
Mr. Alam drew his attention to two recent news reports, and said that while these cases of harassment had come to light, there were many that had gone unreported.
The first case, reported on the website TwoCircles.net , was that of Chand, 28, from Sitamarhi in Bihar who, in the space of a fortnight, was stopped twice at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport and prevented from taking a flight to Qatar. He was detained and asked questions about the weapons he had been trained to use. The airport staff sent him back home, only to subject him to the same humiliation 15 days later when he turned up with a fresh air ticket.
The second case, reported in a newspaper, was that of a 42-year-old civil engineer from Mumbai who went to the Income-Tax office on work, unaware that it adjoined the Israeli Consulate. The engineer was picked up by the Consulate staff and taken to the police station, where he was subjected to detailed questioning for four hours. The police searched his apartment, and finally released him with the advice not to keep a long beard.
Mr. Alam demanded that a transparent procedure be adopted to explain such cases, and where no explanation was forthcoming, the victims be given ?due compensation? for the loss of money, time and honour. ?It is time that such random, whimsical detentions and denial of free movement are stopped.?
