Home

Why Subscribe ?

Popularise CC

Join News Letter

Twitter

Face Book

Editor's Picks

Feed Burner

Read CC In Your
Own Language

Mumbai Terror

Financial Crisis

Iraq

AfPak War

Peak Oil

Alternative Energy

Climate Change

US Imperialism

US Elections

Palestine

Latin America

Communalism

Gender/Feminism

Dalit

Globalisation

Humanrights

Economy

India-pakistan

Kashmir

Environment

Book Review

Gujarat Pogrom

WSF

Arts/Culture

India Elections

Archives

Links

Submission Policy

About CC

Disclaimer

Fair Use Notice

Contact Us

Search Our Archive

 



Our Site

Web

Subscribe To Our
News Letter

Name: E-mail:

Printer Friendly Version

The Meaning Of Shahid Azmi

By Hanna Ingber Win

22 March, 2010
GlobalPost

MUMBAI, India — When Shahid Azmi was 15, police gathered outside his home in a slum area of Mumbai. As he, his brothers and mother huddled inside between the bed and cupboards, his older brother Arif recalls, police stoned the home and fired shots over the windows.

Shahid had a front-row view of Mumbai’s 1993 riots in which mobs of Hindus burned down homes, destroyed businesses and killed hundreds of Muslims as police looked on. His brother said Shahid also saw officers storm a Muslim home in their Shivaji Nagar community, drag women out of the apartment and try to rape them in the street. He witnessed an officer tell a Muslim neighbor to run, only to get shot by another cop.

Another brother, Khalid, recounts Shahid’s life as he sits in Shahid’s former office in Mumbai’s middle-class suburb of Kurla. Shahid had become a lawyer, representing Muslim Indians he considered wrongly accused of terrorist charges.

Last month, three armed gunmen entered this office and shot Shahid dead at point-blank range. He was 32.

“His goal was to provide justice to all those people who are innocent who have been falsely arrested,” says Khalid. As he talks, a group of Shahid’s former clients gather in the waiting room. One man sits across the desk from Khalid and fumbles through his papers. The man’s uncle was convicted in connection with the 1998 bomb blasts in Mumbai, in which more than 200 people lost their lives. The uncle wants a temporary release to visit his ailing brother. Khalid, also a lawyer, agrees to take the case.

Mumbai’s Muslim community has reacted with sorrow and anger to the murder of a young man many considered a selfless advocate for the poor and oppressed, say Muslim journalists and religious leaders. The Urdu-language newspapers have carried stories daily related to his Feb. 11 murder, and community groups have organized meetings to bring attention to his death and pressure the police to investigate it fully.

The murder has also stirred up long-held feelings of animosity toward the police and highlights the deep-seated distrust and disdain much of the Muslim community has for the investigative agencies.

After the 1993 riots — among the deadliest of the tit-for-tat attacks between Hindus and Muslims that followed the controversial demolition of a mosque in northern India by Hindu nationalists the previous year — Shahid was so enraged that he fled to Kashmir, the disputed Himalayan region administered in part by both India and Pakistan but claimed as a whole by both. Once there, he took up arms against the state, says Khalid.

The younger brother says Shahid did not talk much about his time in Kashmir, only that he had good aim.

Police arrested Shahid in 1994 for allegedly plotting to kill a political leader. He was found guilty of attending terrorist training camps in Kashmir and waging war against India. He served almost six years in prison.

Shahid spent his time behind bars studying and helping others draft applications to receive food from their families or get parole, Khalid says. When he left prison, he did not return to the insurgency. He became a lawyer.

Shahid made a name for himself by representing Muslims accused of various bomb blasts or other terrorism-related charges. At the time of his murder he was representing Fahim Ansari, an Indian accused of reconnaissance activities in connection with the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which saw 10 armed Islamist militants kill 166 and injure more than 300.

Three people have been arrested on suspicion of shooting Shahid and one for arranging the logistics, according to Deven Bharti, a police commissioner in Mumbai. He says the police believe a suspected underworld gangster, Bharat Nepali, is behind the killing, but he has fled the country.

Copyright 2009 GlobalPost – International News

 

 


HTML Comment Box is loading comments...