Author: Mohammed Shafeeq, Indo-Asian
News Service
Publication: Yahoo News
Date: December 23, 2002
URL: http://in.news.yahoo.com/021223/43/1zfg3.html
Muslim groups in Andhra Pradesh
have threatened to intensify protests against the killings by police of
two youths from the community if a judicial probe is not initiated.
The Joint Action Committee comprising
Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, Jamaat-e-Islami, Majlis-e-Tameer-e-Millat
and other groups reiterated their demand for an inquiry into last month's
killings by a high court judge and suspension of guilty police officers.
A resolution to this effect was
passed at a mammoth pubic meeting organised by the Joint Action Committee
here Sunday night to protest the deaths.
Police had killed the two Muslim
youths in two separate encounters, claiming they were working for Pakistan-based
terror group Lashker-e-Taiba (LeT) and were involved in a blast near a
Hindu temple in the city.
Two people were killed and 20 injured
in the blast near the Sai Baba temple in.
Two days after the blast, police
killed Mohammed Azam on the outskirts of Hyderabad followed by another
encounter in Karimnagar district on November 24, killing S.A. Aziz.
The families of both the youths,
however, denied the police allegations and said they were killed in fake
encounters.
This was the third public meeting
organised by the committee since it launched the state-wide stir, with
a public meeting at the Adilabad district headquarter on December 18.
The second meeting was held in Nizamabad
on December 20.
MIM president and MP Sultan Salahuddin
Owaisi warned the state government that the silence of Muslims should not
be construed as their weakness.
"The government should not forget
what happened during protests against the police in the Rameeza Bi case.
Not a single police station was left in the city," he said.
He was referring to attacks on police
stations during demonstrations to protest the rape of a Muslim woman in
a police station in the 1980s. "Nobody should underestimate our strength.
We are still strong," he said.
MIM has four members in the state
assembly and one member in Lok Sabha and enjoys tremendous support among
Muslims in the state capital and some areas in Telangana region of the
state.
Joint Action Committee convenor
and eminent Islamic scholar Moulana Hameeduddin Auqil Hussami said the
need for the protest was felt because it seemed police could target any
Muslim by branding him a terrorist.
"If the police's claims about the
two youths are true then why this hesitation in ordering a judicial probe?"
he asked.
The killings of the two Muslim youths
caused tension in the Muslim-majority walled quarter of the city. Muslims
constitute 40 percent of the four million population of the city.
