Mumbai : Sharif Shaikh, lawyer of Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) suspect Anees Ansari, is planning to ask the court to get his client examined by a psychiatrist during the next hearing on October 31, when the former’s extended custody expires.
This comes after Shaikh was informed by Anees’s family that he had been experiencing psychological issues for the past few months. While neighbours at Anees’s previous residence have already told the FPJ that Anees was emotionally and mentally weak since childhood, his lawyer confirmed it too. His neighbours had also seen him talking to himself on several occasions. He had also started sleeping very less and fitfully, which added to his agitated moods.
His family noticed the subtle changes when he started getting angry at small things. An example his family gave to their advocate was that when he used to try to sleep and if his four-year-old brother would be playing beside him, he would shout at the child too harshly for disturbing him. Seeing that Anees had always had behavioural issues, except for his father Shakeel Ahmed Ansari, no one else shouted at him or reprimanded him.
While his family had tried to take him to a psychiatrist, he had always refused and maintained that he was fine.
According to Dr Sujay Prabhugaonkar of the Bhakti Vendanta Hospital in Mira Road, the fact that Anees felt guilty after getting angry impulsively shows that he was depressed. “In addition he used to talk to himself which is a way of venting out his frustration. When a person is depressed he looks for an escape route for acceptance and he found the cause of ISIS,” Prabhugaonkar said.
“If Anees really wanted to commit a crime, why would he discuss such an issue on a platform like Facebook where his account can be hacked or his activities can be intercepted easily by law-enforcing agencies?” argued Shaikh.
Based on the point that Anees’s alleged activities for which he has been arrested could just be a product of his psychological disorders, Shaikh said that he is going to apply for his examination by a psychiatrist at the court. “In order to overcome his own inferiority complex and feel powerful, he may have thought of challenging the mighty America. Also, Anees’s thought process is of the black and white type, where the world is divided into good and bad. Good is ISIS and bad is America. There are no grey areas in between. This sort of thinking is present in people with depression and borderline personality disorder,” Prabhugaonkar said.
When asked through a text message if Anees has been provided with psychiatric help by the ATS, its Chief Himanshu Roy did reply.
Anees was arrested on Saturday, October 18 on the suspicion that he is going to blow up American institutions in Mumbai after ATS came across his chats and posts on his fake account on the social networking website, Facebook.
