Three days after he was taken into custody in the Malleswaram blast case, 28-year-old Aliyappa was released on Friday.
Mr. Aliyappa is among nine suspects picked up jointly by the Tamil Nadu and Bangalore city police since the blast on April 17.
A visibly bruised and battered Mr. Aliyappa on Friday lost his way in the city after his release from Madiwala interrogation cell. Having come to make a living here, Mr. Aliyappa, a native of Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu, neither knows Kannada nor the city.
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He was a room-mate of arrested suspect Peer Mohiudeen with whom he was selling biscuits and tea powder at Venkateshpura, near Tannery Road, for about six months.
On Friday, he managed to reach Shivajinagar with great difficulty. Coincidentally, in nearby Queen’s Road, the Association of People for Civil Rights (APCR) had organised a press meet in which Mr. Aliyappa’s family was present. Despite giving Mr. Aliyappa directions he was unable to reach the venue on time. Some activists asked him to come to a particular bus-stop at Shivajinagar terminus, and thus tracked him. Mr. Aliyappa, who arrived at the press meet after it was over, told reporters that the police questioned him intensively for three days.
“I did not know any of the answers to their questions and they let me go. They asked me to sign on a blank paper and ordered me not to discuss my detention with anyone,” he told
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The APCR is planning to approach the State human rights commission and the courts regarding the detentions.
Mr. Aliyappa was detained for three days by the police without informing his family, Irshad Ahmed Desai of APCR said, adding that this amounted to kidnapping.
Mr. Aliyappa had become incommunicado with his family members after he was picked up by the police at 2.30 a.m. on April 22.
His concerned family approached a local advocate Abdul Kalam Bagadur Sha, who sent a telegram to the city Police Commissioner on April 25 after which he was released the next day.
While five of the nine picked up have been released, the others in police custody are Peer Mohideen, Basheer, Kichan Buhari and Saddam Hussein.