ATS framed us, claims acquitted Mumbai train blasts’ accused

“I had two cases registered against my name in the same court. They knew about the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) case for which I was arrested in 2001, but were unaware of the second one. I refused to admit having another case registered against me, even after suffering unceasing beatings. The Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) couldn’t find the other case registered against me in the same court as the SIMI case, how can one expect the ATS to find the terrorists who committed such a deadly and a lousy crime,” asked Abdul Wahid Shaikh, who was acquitted, after being imprisoned for nine years, of all charges in the 2006 Mumbai bomb blasts case.

“The ATS couldn’t solve the case, hence they conspired,” Wahid said.

“A fictional drama was created; a story was written with 13 characters and all 13 were assigned individual roles in the blasts. X planted the bomb, Y had terrorists visiting his house for the past few days and so on,” said Wahid, claiming that the Maharashtra ATS had arrested all innocent people as they were “incapable” of solving such a high-profile case. Wahid was speaking at the NH Conversations last week.

“All 13 of us had some or the other case registered against us. I was arrested in 2001 in a SIMI case,” added Wahid, before proceeding to make more scathing claims.

“A convict can be prosecuted if the police have, one, a confession statement; two, a recovery; and, three, witnesses. The confession was written by the ATS officers and we were forced to sign. For that matter, until today, I don’t know what was written in my confession statement,” said Wahid, who has also penned down a book named Begunah Quaidi (An innocent prisoner) on his experience in the prison as a terrorist blast accused.

Accusing the ATS of even planting recovered items from the accused persons’ homes and creating fake witnesses, Wahid recalled, “Maps were created by them. It had a route; India to Pakistan via Tehran. It was made to look like we travelled from India to Tehran and then to Pakistan to complete our training. For the witnesses, they forced people to witness. Our close relatives were forced to be witnesses against us. They used to threaten them that they would be the 14th accused if they didn’t do what they were told to.”

Wahid, averring that he was innocent, also accused that the ATS got a “clinching evidence” against him in the form of his own close relative after “forcing” the latter to be a witness. Wahid further claimed that the jail doctors were all party to the framing. “For any prisoner to travel, he has to undergo several medical tests and their results have to be negative. We were beaten in the judicial custody and taken to the doctors in burqas. The doctors didn’t even see our faces inside the burqas and declare us fit to travel.”

Last week, National Herald had published a story of Wahid claiming that the narco-analysis tests conducted by Dr Malini in Bangalore were tampered and doctored.