Delhi: On 26 January 2024, the day India celebrated the adoption of its Constitution with a grand parade of its cultural diversity and military strength, Saud Ahmed, a 43-year-old Muslim pharmacist, was writing a complaint to the Maharashtra state police, pleading with them to stop “harassing” him and making him feel like a “second class citizen”.
In the complaint, Ahmed started by saying that he was a taxpayer and a “peace-loving citizen” of India.
“This illegal activity of police harassment”, Ahmed wrote, had been going on for many years. In an interview, he alleged police had visited his home more than 100 times, summoned him 50 times and detained him twice over 20 years.
Khalid, who lives with his wife, three children, aged 10, eight and one, and his asthmatic mother, who requires frequent medical attention, said he wanted to move on from the past and build a future for his family without fear.
In the latest complaint, he wrote that frequent visits by police had left him “completely financially disturbed, mentally unstable”, and his “business was also disturbed”.
“This also kind of gives me the impression that I’m a second-class citizen…these all create a fear-like environment for me,” wrote Ahmed.
In March 2021, Ahmed was one of 124 Muslim men acquitted by a court in Surat, Gujarat, more than 19 years after they were accused of reviving the banned organisation Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and organising a meeting in Surat on 28 December 2001, weeks after outrage against a terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament.
In August 2021, Article 14 reported how the Gujarat police arrested the men in 2001, accusing them of foreign links and conspiracies and charged them under India's anti-terror law, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967. The court found no such evidence.
Ahmed, who has a diploma in pharmacy, was jailed for 11 months from December 2001 to November 2002 in Surat. After getting bail, he returned to Mumbai and worked at a medical store in Vikhroli.
Ever since he was first arrested in 2001, Ahmed, who was born and raised in the city, said he could not remember a time when the police left him alone; he spoke of more than 100 visits by the police, 50 summons to police stations and being detained at least twice.
In these two decades, Maharashtra has been governed by the Indian National Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Nationalist Congress Party, and the Shiv Sena.
Ahmed, a father of three, said the cycle of questioning and summoning was more or less the same under all of them.
Most of those who came and questioned him dressed in civilian clothes and were friendly. Some just ask him how he is doing. One told him he was from the Intelligence Bureau and asked if he wanted tea.
Ahmed said this strange mix of bonhomie and intimidation was confusing and unnerving.
“When I asked a policeman whether the judgement of the court did not matter, he said, ‘It’s not that. You know how it is. The atmosphere of the nation is a bit up and down.’ I said, ‘But I’m not responsible for the atmosphere of the nation,’” he said.
Ahmed said he expected this “harassment” to stop once he was acquitted, but it has not, and there seemed to be no end in sight.
Living in terror of being implicated in a false case and exhausted by the uncertainty that came every time he was questioned or summoned, Ahmed, the sole provider of his family, said he felt compelled to write to the police.
“I was accused of a crime, but that judge found me innocent and let me go. I’m still living in fear, and I feel like they are treating me like a second-class citizen,” said Ahmed in an interview. “My wife is also tense. The atmosphere in the house becomes very fearful every time they come. Will something happen? Inshallah, nothing will. But we are always fearful.”
“I did not say anything for a long time because I was an accused in a trial, but I was found innocent, and still, it has not stopped. It should stop now,” he said. “The latest incidents, asking me for a copy of the judgement and taking my photo, really messed with my head. I thought it would never stop if I didn’t say something.”
Article 14 reached out to the director general of police for Maharashtra, the Mumbai police commissioner, and the joint commissioner of police, law and order over email, and we will update the copy if they respond.
The Complaint
In the complaint he emailed, Ahmed alleged that an assistant sub-inspector (ASI) of police visited his medical shop on the night of 25 January 2024 and “forcefully took my selfie with his mobile phone without my consent.”
“I resisted, but he saved my photo in his mobile phone and informed me that other police department personnel would also visit the medical store,” wrote Ahmed. “When I asked for a reason, no reason was given.”
Earlier in January, Ahmed wrote that another policeman and the same ASI came to his medical store and demanded a copy of the judgement of the case in which he was acquitted.
In August last year, Ahmed said police personnel told him to appear before the crime branch in the western Mumbai suburb of Ghatkopar, where he was interrogated about the case in which he was acquitted.
“Likewise, in the past, many police personnel used to visit the medical store, and at other times, I used to receive mobile phone calls and was told to visit various police stations, and on every time in the name of enquiry, they used to ask me about my previous case in which I was acquitted,” Ahmed wrote.
“Each time, the police personnel never issued any notice to me for the appearance at the police station. They always orally instructed me to attend the said police station. They also orally instructed me to hand over the copy of my judgement to them,” he wrote.
Four days after Ahmed sent his complaint, his email was forwarded to the joint commissioner of police, law and order. He was copied on the email.
The Shadow Of Terrorism
Last year, Article 14 reported the story of Abdul Wahid Shaikh, a Mumbai-based activist, jailed in a UAPA case for nine years after the 2006 Mumbai train bombings before being acquitted in 2015.
Like Ahmed, Shaikh alleged the police continued to harass him despite his acquittal.
In October 2023, when the National Investigation Agency was carrying out raids as part of its investigation into the banned Popular Front of India (PFI), Shaikh did not let officers enter his home without proper identification and a warrant, even as they broke down his door and stopped his CCTV cameras.
Shaikh’s wife and four children were at home with him then.
The PFI, a Kerala-based Islamist organisation, which some believe is an offshoot of SIMI, was banned by the BJP government in New Delhi in September 2022.
Shaikh, who runs a collective called Innocence Network to help wrongfully incarcerated people, said that he knew more men like Saud who were acquitted in the 2001 SIMI case but who were still being harassed by the police in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh.
There were also men acquitted in other UAPA cases who were still being questioned. Most were too scared to come forward.
“Saud was also quiet for many years, saying ‘let it go, let it go’, but he was so angry after they took his selfie that he decided to file a complaint,” said Shaikh. “But most people feel that if they say or do something, the police will arrest them in a false case, or they could get into trouble.
But those who have the courage to speak out, we help them with filing complaints, speaking to the media and human rights groups,” said Shaikh.
Shaikh, who said the Mumbai police—officers from the crime branch and the anti-terrorism cell (ATC) had visited him—spent Rs 25,000-30,000 to install CCTV cameras around his house to capture their comings and goings. He attached these images with complaints he filed with the police, the courts, and the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC).
“Most of them don’t take cognisance or action, but I keep filing the complaints so they get recorded,” he said. “We won’t get anything by keeping quiet.”
Ahmed said the NHRC notified the Mumbai police, but the file was closed in June 2022.
The response by the deputy commissioner of police referred to the communication from the NHRC to the human rights group that took up Shaikh’s case, said that the ATC established in 2009 maintains a “Union War Book” and Shaikh’s name is “included in the suspected persons of Union War Book list” and its purpose is to “to check/verify the present activities of listed suspicious persons, including their occupation, whereabouts, link with any suspicious organisation in the interest of National Sovereignty and Security.”
Closing the case, the NHRC said that Shaikh was associated with the banned organisation SIMI, accused in the Mumbai training bombing case, acquitted due to insufficient evidence, but is a suspected person in the war book of the ATC Maharashtra, which requires checking and verifying the activities of suspects. “In view of such facts and circumstances, the commission is not inclined to take further action in the matter.”
Copy Of The Judgement
Ahmed said that when the policeman asked him for a copy of the judgement, he was confused and fearful and resisted, telling the police they had more resources than he did to get it.
Still, believing that giving them a copy of the judgement might end his ordeal, Ahmed called his lawyer in Surat, who told him there was no cause for the police to ask him for it.
“I told him (the officer) to get it, but he said, ‘No, you have to get it.’ He said, ‘For us, you are a criminal. We don’t think of you as acquitted.’ I asked him where I would get it from. It would cost me Rs 2,500. He said I would lose more income if I was summoned to the police station and stood before a police officer for the whole day,” said Ahmed. “I got the judgement. It was in Gujarati.”
Ahmed paid Rs 2,000 for a copy of the judgement.
On the day the ASI took his selfie, Ahmed resisted again, but the policeman still took it.
“I told him, ‘Look, I’ve already given you the copy of the judgement. The court acquitted me. Does that have no meaning?’ This mental harassment keeps going on,” he said.
In August last year, when he was summoned to the crime branch and asked about the case in which he was acquitted, Ahmed said he asked the police to leave him alone.
“They make you sit for a long time, for one or two hours. They keep asking me about the same thing. They ask me how I’m doing. What is going on? They asked me about my political views and my views on the PFI. They ask me for names. They ask me about the case,” said Ahmed
“I said, ‘Sir, I’ve been found innocent. I don’t want to think about my past.’ They asked how anyone can forget the past. But I want to forget the past and move forward,” he said.
At Home
Khalid said not only was he constantly looking over his shoulder, his wife was always worried that the police would take him away.
Ahmed’s father died of a heart attack a few months after he was jailed in Surat, but his family told him almost a year later when he got bail and was going home. His father was around his age when he died, and Ahmed said he still felt his loss deeply. He did not know whether to blame the heart attack on his arrest and incarceration.
Ahmed lives in the house that his grandfather and his father lived in. He has roots in Mumbai, a job he likes and held on to for 20 years, so he does not want to leave a place he calls home.
Whenever there was a law-and-order situation in Mumbai or elsewhere in the country, Ahmed said, he feared the police would come for him.
“Earlier, anything would happen, and they would come at night and take you away. They make you sit (in the police station) for 48 hours. You don’t know what is coming,” said Ahmed.
“I’m not a criminal,” he said. “I cannot bear it anymore. I have a wife, children and a mother whose lung has almost collapsed. I have to take care of them.”
(Betwa Sharma is managing editor of Article 14).
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