IN TERROR’S SHADOW

I have told my children their father has gone to perform Haj, says Yahiya Kammukutty’s wife Farida
Farida should have been happy—she is eight months pregnant, expecting her fourth baby. But with her husband Yahiya Khan alias Yahiya Kammukutty in Belgaum Central Jail, she has little to look forward to. A software professional who worked with companies in Bangalore, Yahiya was arrested in February on charges of plotting terror.
“The doctor has asked me to be cheerful, but how can I,” asks Farida, in her late 20s, hugging her three children, all less than 10 years old. A native of Karuvampoyil in North Kerala’s Kozhikode district, Farida said police had whisked Yahiya away from their Bangalore house on the pretext of address verification. She waited for a day, expecting he would return. It was at a restaurant that Farida and her family—her father Imbichiali and brother Nissam—saw TV visuals of Yahiya being taken to court. Farida collapsed in the eatery. “Our priority was to bring Farida to Kerala,” says Nissam.
When she returned to her husband’s house at Mukkom in Kozhikode, the media and the Kerala Police awaited her. Hindu outfits organised a march to the house of Yahiya, dubbing him a terrorist and anti-national. “The Karnataka Police have collected Malayalam literature on Muslim politics and a computer hard disk, but I still do not know what crime my husband committed,” says Farida. “I have told my children that their father has gone for Haj. What else can I tell them,” she asks.
_SHAJU PHILIP

In Kaprassery, in Kerala’s Ernakulam district, CAM Basheer is a faint memory
The radars of the security agencies may be trained on Chanayamparamba Abdulkhadar Muhammed Basheer, a wanted SIMI leader, but in his native village Kaprassery in Kerala’s Ernakulam district, Basheer is a faint memory. Not many recall that face. Basheer, 43, has been missing for 15 years now.
For the Chanayamparmba family, the return of its youngest son, dead or alive, is a distant dream. “We have suffered a lot of agony over the last 15 years. The charges levelled against him by the police and the media have made life miserable for us. Our children have to face embarrassing situations in school due to the terror tag attached to the family,” says Basheer’s brother Muhammed Kunji, a wholesale dealer of NCERT books in nearby Aluva town.
Son of the late Abdulkhadar and Beeyathu, Basheer scaled SIMI’s organisational ladder and went on to become its all-India president. Till 10 years ago, he would regularly telephone his brothers. When they asked Basheer about his whereabouts, he would simply laugh, says Kunji.
His family recalls that even as a child, Basheer used to speak out against social injustice. A good speaker, he had a view on most issues. “He did not even spare his community for exploiting poor Muslims. He was never an extremist,” Kunji says. After completing his diploma in aeronautical engineering, Basheer went to Bangalore for training, never to return.
Many in Kaprassery do not know where the house of the “most wanted terrorist” is located. The weather-beaten house—where his brother Akber, the only unemployed in the family, lives—wears a desolate look. Time has sped past the house, which, amidst the palatial residences of other family members, looks like an eyesore.
_SHAJU PHILIP

Shahbaz Hussain’s father disowned him legally in 2002
Shahbaz Hussain, a journalism graduate, joined SIMI in 1996 after he met the then UP chief of the outfit, Dr Shahid Badr Falahi. No one at Shahbaz’s native place in Bhadohi, where he was brought up, or in Lucknow, where he had been living since 2005, was surprised when the Jaipur police revealed his SIMI background. Shahbaz is now in the custody of the Jaipur Police for his alleged role in the May blasts.
A carpet dealer, a close friend of Shahbaz’s father Mumtaz Hussain in Bhadohi, said that Shahbaz was a bright student who appeared deeply influenced by Falahi. He said Shahbaz led a group of 22 SIMI members in Bhadohi Township and organised meetings and spread the ideas of the outfit, leading to his nomination as district president in 1998.
“We used to see him pasting posters and circulating SIMI pamphlets. But we still do not believe he would have gone to the extent of orchestrating the blasts,” says the carpet dealer who didn’t want to be named. He also says that Mumtaz wanted Shahbaz, his elder son, to join him in the family business but Shahbaz wasn’t interested.
After he got a degree in journalism from Kashi Vidyapeeth, Varanasi, in 2000, Shahbaz started writing for Islamic Movement, an English magazine. The carpet dealer says Shahbaz left Bhadohi after the police crackdown on SIMI in 2001. Mumtaz legally disowned his son in 2002 to avoid the frequent police raids at his house.
Shahbaz married in December 2002 and the couple relocated to Lucknow in 2005. Here, Shahbaz opened a cyber café and wound it up to start a consultancy firm, Zyna Career Consultancy, from the same place.
_bhupendra pandey