‘ISI agents’ in STF custody: If they worked for Pak agency, where’s the money, asks family

She, like her other family members, claims his father, “a heart patient”, is innocent and had no links with the Pakistan’s intelligence agency.

“We live in this house, which is less than 100 square feet in area. My father was a daily wage earner and since his arrest we have not had a proper meal. The two male members of our house are behind bars and everyone around knows it. My mother and I are spending our days in a lot of insecurity,” said Shafreen.
She claimed that Irshad was a heart patient and has already suffered two cardiac attacks – the last time in March this year. Shafreen claimed that Jahangir was a religious person who lived in an equally small house in the vicinity and had a “reputation” of being a very helpful person. “My grandmother had not been told of the arrests. She is a heart patient and would die of a heart attack,” Shafreen said.
Irshad was the acting president of the INTTUC, the labour wing of the ruling Trinamool Congress affiliated trade union, at the GRSE. Asfaq was the general secretary of the TMCP-led students’ union at Harimohan Ghosh College. His friends at college claimed that he was an avid lover of cricket and that they had never had any reasons to believe that he could have been spying for ISI. “He is a soft spoken and introvert person. We can never link him to such activities,” said one of his classmates.

Ironically, the political party they had been linked with, had disowned them immediately. TMC leaders said both Irshad and Asfaq had been expelled from the party for anti-party activities. “That they will say, because they don’t want the arrests to affect the party’s name in any way,” Shafreen alleged.

The family members of Akhtar Khan and Jaffar Khan, who were the first of the six alleged ISI linkmen to be arrested in Kolkata, claim that the duo had been to Pakistan but only to visit an ailing relative.

Their sister Suraiya Begum said she was running from pillar to post to get legal help for her brothers trying to manage everything “within the Rs 200 a day earning” of her husband. “I live in a rented place in Topsia. My landlord had come to me the other day and said that my brothers had been arrested as criminals and it has brought a bad name to the people here. So I must vacate the house,” Suraiya said, claiming her brothers were no ISI agents but had went to Pakistan to visit an ailing relative.
Akhilesh Kumar Chaturvedi, deputy commissioner, Special Task Force (STF) however, claim that they have enough evidence to prove that all the arrested men – these five and another one Sheikh Badal held on December 2 – are ISI agents. “They (the family members of the accused) can say whatever they want to. We have arrested them on the basis of evidence. The investigation is going on and I cannot comment about anything else in this case,” Chaturvedi said.

The senior STF official, however, said arrests —- six in about a fortnight —- of were not indicative of any pattern. “We carry out operations according to the intelligence inputs we get. These arrests have been made based on such inputs,” Chaturvedi said.
Senior officials of the STF said they will make more arrests soon based on the information extracted from the arrested accused. All the six have been booked under several sections including 121 (attempting to wage war against the state) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC, and are at present in STF custody .