Bhopal: The visit of a National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) team to probe the allegations of barbaric behaviour with 21 SIMI activists lodged in the Bhopal Central Jail has made little difference to the life of the under-trials. Their ordeal continues.
Their family members, who met them on Eid on Tuesday at the jail, told Free Press that though they are now being given three rotis (against one or occasionally none) in the mornings and evenings but they are still being kept in solitary confinement round-the-clock, with midnight beatings and no medical care. And they still have to make do with an 8-litre water bottle for all their needs in 24 hours.
“He is wearing the same set of clothes since the encounter. The stench from his body was unbearable. Even on Eid, they did not allow him to wear new or at least clean clothes,” said Haider, a truck mechanic whose brother Mohd. Zubair is one SIMI detunes. Zubair’s mother Khana Bi, his wife and three children had travelled to Bhopal from Mahidpur in Ujjain, where they live, to meet Zubair on Eid.
After the tenth roza, probably due to NHRC intervention, the jail authorities started giving all of them a banana and a cup of milk for ‘Iftar’, he says. Earlier, they were given nothing. “Ibadatat karne ke liye nahana hota hai, saaf kapde chahiye hote hain” (You need to take bath, wear clean clothes for prayers), he said, when asked whether the SIMI men were being allowed to offer namaz.
According to Wajid Hussain, 26, brother of Sajid Hussain, who is in jail since 2013, the prisoner is not being provided treatment for piles and the kidney ailments he is suffering from. “I requested the jail authorities with folded hands to at least provide him warm water and cotton so that he can clean himself after rectal bleeding but that was not done,” said Wajid, whose cold drinks and ice-cream shop at Mahidpur is the only source of sustenance for his family of nine including his ailing mother, his brother’s wife, their three children, his wife and his two kids. “I am tired and feel very helpless,” he says. His father had passed away a year back. “He was very depressed by the condition of my brother,” he says.
Wajid does not know why his brother – along with other SIMI men – is being kept in solitary confinement. “They are kept locked inside 12 feet by 6 feet cells round-the-clock. And they are woken up twice or thrice every night for ‘checking’ and are often kicked and punched for no reason”, he says.
His mother and the wife and children of his brother had met Sajid on Eid. “They were given 15 minutes to interact with their families. But they were not allowed to meet each-other. My mother had carried some fruits and sweets for him but they did not allow him to carry anything inside”, he says.
Jahid Nagori, who works in a hotel says, “Ammi was so shocked to see my bother (Irfan Nagori) so frail and in old, smelly clothes on Eid that she could not even talk to him. She just kept on crying.”
Report status not know
A three-member probe team of NHRC, headed by Pupul Dutta Prasad, SSP and in-charge of Investigation Division of the Commission had arrived here on June 19 to probe the complaints. During its three-day stay in the city, the team members had visited the jail and recorded statements of the under-trials, their family members, activists of civil rights organisations and jail functionaries. There is no official word on whether the team has submitted its report.
