by Aarefa Johari

I have been made to suffer all three degrees of torture that the police use to force false confessions out of people

During the nine years he spent in jail for a crime he did not commit, Abdul Wahid Shaikh completed a Master’s degree in English, a course in journalism and the first year of a law degree. But his biggest accomplishment, he believes, is writing a 400-page book about his experiences, to serve as a guide for anyone who gets falsely implicated in a terrorist attack.

In 2006, Shaikh was one of the 13 men arrested by the Maharashtra police for allegedly carrying out the July 11 Mumbai train bomb blasts, which killed 188 people and injured more than 800. Shaikh was specifically accused of using his house to harbour Pakistani terrorists, who then went on to plant bombs in the city’s local trains along with 13 Indian conspirators. Nine years later, in September 2015, 12 of the accused were convicted by a special court in Mumbai. Shaikh alone was acquitted, after the court found no merit in the accusations against him.

After his release, 38-year-old Shaikh slowly began to pick up the threads of his life once again – a life with his wife, his now-teenaged son and daughter and his former job as a science teacher at an Anjuman-e-Islam school. But the trauma of the custodial torture he was put through has not yet left him.

Last week, Shaikh officially released Begunaah Qaidi – Innocent Prisoner – the book he spent ten months writing when he was in Mumbai’s Arthur Road jail. The Urdu book, Shaikh makes clear, is less of an autobiography and more of a guidebook for other innocent prisoners fighting the “police state”.

Nonetheless, the early chapters of the book contain Shaikh’s gut-wrenching accounts of the kind of torture that he and his co-accused were put through for the first three months after their arrest.

Three degrees of torture

“I have been made to suffer all three degrees of torture that the police use to force false confessions out of people,” said Shaikh, speaking to Scroll.in during recess hour at the school where he teaches.

First, he says, the police use verbal abuse, threats and the stripping of clothes as an interrogation technique. “Second degree is when they beat you with belts, force you into hunger or solitary confinement, tie you up and force you to stand for days,” said Shaikh. Third degree involves extreme physical torture including waterboarding, using electric shocks or chemicals on private parts, or forcing the prisoner’s legs into 180-degree splits.

“They also make rape threats towards the wives and sisters of the accused, or molest female relatives in front of you,” said Shaikh, who claims that one of his co-accused was forced to watch police officers molest his sister-in-law. “Through these means, the police managed to get false confessional statements from everyone.”

Shaikh was the only accused at the time who did not end up signing a confessional statement, which he claims was a deliberate “strategy” on the part of the police’s anti-terrorism squad to prove in court that no torture had been involved in the interrogations. However, in the jail cells of various prisons in Maharashtra, Shaikh continued to face intermittent bouts of mental and physical torture till 2008. “At one point they fractured my arm and left me without medication for 15 days,” he said.

Characteristics of a terror accused

Now that he is acquitted and out as a free man, a number of Shaikh’s well-wishers have asked him to file criminal cases against the police for the torture he was put through. But Shaikh does not plan to do that any time soon. “My focus right now is to appeal against the conviction of the other 12 men in this case, because I know they are also innocent,” said Shaikh.

In his book, Shaikh writes about what he believes are the typical characteristics that the police in India look for while making arrests terror attack cases. “First, of course, he has to be a Muslim. They almost never bother to arrest Hindus,” he said. “He also has to be highly qualified, like an engineer, businessman, doctor, post-graduate. They don’t like Muslims becoming successful leaders.”

Also, as in the case of Shaikh himself, the police allegedly look to arrest men who already have some small previous criminal record in their name. In 2001, Shaikh claims he was framed and falsely accused of being a member of the banned extremist outfit, Students Islamic Movement of India. As a result, he was repeatedly questioned by the police in multiple terror attack cases in Mumbai. “I was eventually acquitted in that case in 2012,” he said.

Innocence Network

Now, less than two years since his acquittal, Shaikh has already become an activist for the rights of all prisoners accused of false cases, and the 12 remaining men convicted in the train blasts case.

Last year, he founded an organisation called Innocence Network, drawing together prominent lawyers, retired judges, activists and filmmakers to fight false arrests. The organisation holds seminars, rallies and people’s tribunals to spread awareness about the ways in which innocent Muslims often get implicated in false cases.

Shaikh is now looking for Hindi and English translators for his book, so that he can reach out to a larger number of readers. “I want to send out three messages through my book,” said Shaikh. “First, that the 7/11 train blasts case is bogus, and the convictions are bogus too. Second, that this nation has become a police state. And third, I want to tell people what exactly they can do if they are ever arrested in a false terror case – how you can resist torture, who you can seek help from within the justice system, and more.”

Article first published on Scroll.in.

India was the world’s second-largest arms importer from 2014-18, ceding the long-held tag as largest importer to Saudi Arabia, which accounted for 12% of the total imports during the period.

“India was the world’s second largest importer of major arms in 2014–18 and accounted for 9.5% of the global total,” according to the latest report published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) on Monday.

However, Indian imports decreased by 24% between 2009-13 and 2014-18, partly due to delays in deliveries of arms produced under licence from foreign suppliers, such as combat aircraft ordered from Russia in 2001 and submarines ordered from France in 2008, the report stated.

Russia accounted for 58% of Indian arms imports in 2014–18, compared with 76% in 2009-13. Israel, the U.S. and France all increased their arms exports to India in 2014-18.

However, the Russian share in Indian imports is likely to go up sharply during the next five-year period as India signed several big-ticket deals recently, and more are in the pipeline. These include S-400 air defence systems, four stealth frigates, AK-203 assault rifles, a second nuclear attack submarine on lease, and deals for Kamov-226T utility helicopters, Mi-17 helicopters and short-range air defence systems. The report noted that despite the long-standing conflict between India and Pakistan, arms imports decreased for both countries in 2014-18 compared with 2009-13.

Pakistan at 11th

Pakistan stood at the 11th position, accounting for 2.7% of all global imports. Its biggest source was China, from which 70% of arms were sourced, followed by the U.S. at 8.9% and, interestingly, Russia at 6%.

Globally, the volume of international transfers of major arms in 2014-18 was 7.8% higher than in 2009-13 and 23% higher than in 2004-2008. The five largest exporters in 2014-18 were the United States, Russia, France, Germany and China, which together accounted for 75% of the total volume of arms exports in 2014-18. “The flow of arms increased to the Middle East between 2009-13 and 2014-18, while there was a decrease in flows to all other regions,” the report said.

China, which has emerged as a major arms exporter, has increased its share by 2.7% for 2014-18 compared to 2009-13. Its biggest customers are Pakistan and Bangladesh.

As Indian imports reduced, Russian exports of major arms were dented, decreasing by 17% between 2009-13 and 2014-18. The report said this was partly due to “general reductions in Indian and Venezuelan arms imports”, which have been among the main recipients of Russian arms exports in previous years.

Article first published in The Hindu.