In a letter to the police commissioner, Abdul Wahid Shaikh has detailed how recent police visits to his home have instilled fear in his neighbourhood
Team Clarion
MUMBAI – Despite an honourable acquittal in the high-profile Mumbai train blasts case of 2006, Muslim prison rights activist Abdul Wahid Shaikh continues to endure police harassment.
In a letter to the police commissioner, Abdul Wahid Shaikh has detailed how recent police visits to his home have instilled fear in his neighbourhood. During one such visit, while Shaikh was at work, police officers questioned his wife about his activities, employment, and personal contact information. Shaikh described these inquiries as an invasion of privacy and an intimidation tactic aimed at silencing him.
Shaikh, a school teacher at Anjuman-e-Islam school on Mumbai’s Maulana Shaukat Ali Road, was in jail for nine years in the 7/11 serial train blasts case. In 2015, a special court acquitted him, pronouncing him innocent.
Since his acquittal, Shaikh has become a passionate advocate for prisoners’ rights. He has also authored a book recounting his harrowing experiences.
In his letter, Shaikh pleaded for intervention, urging the police commissioner to halt his unwarranted harassment. “I request that the police be directed not to further harass me in the name of official duty,” he was quoted as saying in a The Observer Post report.
According to Hindustan Times, when the plain-clothed National Investigation Agency (NIA) team accompanied by local police reached Shaikh’s door at 5 am on Wednesday, he refused to open the door demanding that they first show him a proper search warrant and furnish the details of the FIR, if any, against him which they did not have on them.
After hours of back and forth between the NIA team outside Shaikh’s house and the senior police officials, a search warrant was procured and Shaikh let the NIA team inside his house at 11.15 am, six hours after they had first knocked.
Shaikh also released a video statement pointing out the errors in the way the NIA team was trying to enter his home and alleged that somebody had tampered with the CCTV camera located diagonally across the door of his house. The search operation, he said, should be videotaped.
This is not the first time Shaikh has faced such treatment. Last year, an NIA team raided his home during a crackdown.
Shaikh’s situation highlights a disturbing pattern of discrimination against Muslim activists in the country, raising important questions about police accountability and the treatment of minority communities.
