Author: Manoj Mitta
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: October 13, 2001
Omar Sheikh erred in assuming that
the policemen accosting him and his associates were on a routine patrol.
He did not know that little before his arrival in Ghaziabad on October
31, 1994, the police had fortuitously discovered the hideout there while
they were combing the neighbourhood in connection with some other case.
In the scuffle that followed, Sheikh was shot in his shoulder. But Shah
Saab, his mission chief, escaped along with his associate Siddique. After
freeing the American hostage, Bela Joseph Nuss, from Ghaziabad, the police
rushed to the Saharanpur hideout the same night to rescue the three British
hostages, Christopher Crosten, Rhys Partridge and Paul Rideout. There was
an encounter in Saharanpur, leading to three casualties, including two
policemen.
Sheikh spent most of his incarceration
in the the Meerut Jail where he wrote the 35-page account in long hand
of this whole attempt to secure the release of some terrorists, including
the present Jaish chief Maulana Masood Azhar. The meticulous LSE student
also wrote pen sketches of his associates and a "rundown" of the events
that led to his arrival in India as a Jihadi. These are all part of the
court records now in addition to an eight-page confessional statement he
gave to the Delhi police under TADA on December 12, 1994. The prosecution
pressed the charge of terrorism against Sheikh in two courts - in Ghaziabad
for attacking the policemen and in Delhi for kidnapping the four foreigners.
In November 1998, the Ghaziabad court acquitted him of terrorism while
convicting him under the ordinary law. The Delhi court was yet to frame
any charge against Sheikh when the Kandahar hijack drama took place in
December 1999.
On the demand of the hijackers,
Sheikh was taken out of the judicial custody and flown to Kandahar along
with Azhar, for whose freedom he had anyway come to India in the first
place. Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh handed over the two to the Taliban
in Kandahar. Azhar has since founded Jaish-e-Mohammad in Pakistan while
Sheikh's whereabouts are unknown. Sheikh's name resurfaced when reports
from the US alleged that he had wired $ 100,000 to Mohammad Atta, a key
suspect for Black Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the kidnapping case is
still on in the Delhi court. Against Sheikh, in absentia.
