Mulund blast sends village reeling into a nightmare

The villagers now cower behind closed doors, wondering who would be the next to be dragged away by the police in the middle of the night. ‘‘This was a peaceful place to live in until the police started coming here on the pretext of carrying out an investigation and arrested innocent people who had never hurt anybody in their life,’’ complained former sarpanch Ashfaque Suse.

The first victim was Adil Khot, a civil engineer and a former activist of the Student’s Islamic Movement of India (The place boasts of 14 doctors and 28 engineers and innumerable graduates from various fields.) He was picked up on March 14 from his house for a two-year-old case.

He, along with seven others from the village, had been booked for allegedly possessing handbills issued by SIMI protesting against the burning of the holy Quran in New Delhi. This case has been languishing in court.

The police had arrested all the others but listed Khot as absconding. The blast seemed to have blasted the police into the past and they thought Khot would be able to give them leads.

To keep him in police custody, the police stated in the court that he had no known source of livelihood and was a suspect in a Rs 22-lakh dacoity case in Mumbai. When this reason ran its course, they said they wanted his custody for desecration of an idol in a temple near Padgha. Khot is now languishing in a Mumbai jail since police custody expired on April 4.

Khot’s father Iqbal Khot is a worried man since both his sons have been in the police lock-up. ‘‘My sons are no longer active in SIMI and they are innocent. The police are just harrassing us,’’ he said.

Meanwhile, inspector Pradeep Sharma and sub-inspector Daya Nayak of Mumbai Police attempted to take way former SIMI general secretary Saquib Nachen from his ancestral house on March 27 but were stopped by villagers. The two left, after warning the villagers. Next day, an FIR was lodged at Padgha against the villagers.

Nachan, in dramatic circumstances, surrendered before Mumbai high court last Thursday and was promptly arrested by the crime branch under POTA. He was later produced before a special POTA court which remanded him to police custody till April 23.

Meanwhile, his father, Abdul Hameed Nachen filed a petition in the high court alleging that the police wanted to kill his son in an encounter.

‘‘Ever since that incident, the police have been harassing the villagers for information on the blast. People have been randomly arrested and booked for rioting and unlawful assembly,’’ says Ateeque Suse, a furniture trader, who was arrested along with three others on the night of April 27 by the Bhiwandi police. He is now out on bail and has not ventured out of the village fearing police action.

The fear is so acute that the jeeps ferrying people between Bhiwandi and Padgha have seen their business going dowhill since the police began intercepting them and detaining passengers at random. ‘‘Yes, business has been down after sunset. Earlier, we used to ply till midnight but now nobody wants to take the risk,’’ says jeep driver Ateeque Wahid Sheikh.

Twenty-eight-year-old Nadeer Nachen, a tea stall vendor in Bhiwandi, was one of those picked up during one such trip. ‘‘After coming out on bail, I have not dared to venture out of my house,’’ he said.

‘‘If one takes a close look at Padgha, the police action would seem illogical,’’ says former sarpanch Suse. ‘‘There has never been a communal riot, the crime rate is negligible. There are no liquor dens, no beer bars, no gambling arenas and no cable TV! Except for superficial changes, life here has been as it was two decades ago.’’ And it could never be the same again.