A Nephew’s Tale

heikh Abdul Kaleem was 19 and had just gained admission to the Kamineni Medical College, Hyderabad, when he was picked up by the police for “his role” in the Mecca Masjid blast. That was on June 3, 2007. He was charged with passing on the SIM card that caused the blast and stocking 10 kg RDX. Acquitted by a court, he walked out of jail 18 months later, his innocence proved but his psyche scarred forever. It’s his tale of angst and hopelessness that is believed to have moved Swami Aseemanand to confess to his role in the Mecca Masjid and Samjhauta Express blasts.

Kaleem met Aseemanand in November 2010, after being thrown into jail again in October 2010 on the charge of smuggling a cellphone to his brother Khaja, lodged in Cherlapally jail. Khaja was arrested in January 2010 in connection with the 2005 blast at the office of the Task Force, a special unit of the police. Kaleem protests his innocence, saying it was the police themselves who supplied mobiles in jail. He is out on bail  now. It was during his 60-day confinement in Chanchalguda jail that he met Aseemanand, and by chance narrated his story to him. “A couple of barracks separated me from the elderly swami, who used to be locked up most of the time. We used to exchange a salaam now and then, and slowly got talking. I would bring him food and water and sit outside his cell as he ate,” recollects Kaleem.

Aseemanand expressed interest in Kaleem’s life when he heard that the latter had been imprisoned earlier for the Mecca Masjid blast. “I told him it all began with the police rounding me up from my residence in Moosarambagh in 2007 along with several other youths.” Kaleem says he was taken to a farmhouse, where he was tortured for four days. He was also taken for two narcoanalysis tests in Bangalore. “At the end of all this, I wondered whether I was a human being or an animal that simply existed. I told Swami Aseemanand, whom I used to call ‘Uncle’, about all my experiences—in detail. At times he would listen quietly, nodding now and then. At other times, he would have tears in his eyes,” says Kaleem.

Aseemanand also enquired about the number of other youths who had been similarly arrested from the old city precincts of Hyderabad. The swami told Kaleem he had lived in an ashram in Gujarat and also done relief work among tsunami victims in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Kaleem says Aseemanand would often enquire about the fate of families whose kin had died in the Mecca Masjid blast. “Uncle once told me he would bequeath his belongings and savings to these families. At one point, I wondered  aloud what kind of monsters would cause a blast at a religious place, and he nodded gravely.”

Later, Kaleem came to know through jail officials that Aseemanand had confessed to the CBI about his role in the blast. “He did this because he was moved by my experiences. I feel happy he thought of innocent people like us and confessed. But I’d like to assert that the reason for his confession is God, not me,” says Kaleem. Now 23, Kaleem is pursuing his third year LLB at the Mahatma Gandhi Law College, Hyderabad. “I may have been acquitted by the court, but the terrorist tag will always hang around my neck,” he concludes with hurt in his voice.