The Hindu : Evidence, faith clash in Pandya murder case

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Oct 02, 2003

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National

Evidence, faith clash in Pandya murder case

By Praveen Swami

Ahmedabad Oct.1. "No photographs", growls 27-year-old Mufti Mohammad Rizwan, the acting head of the Waliullah Madrassa in Ahmedabad's old city area of Kalupur, "they are against Islam".

Ever since the Central Bureau of Investigations charged Mr. Rizwan's mentor, Maulana Sufiyan Patangia, with running a terror cell responsible for killing the former Gujarat Home Minister, Haren Pandya, the normally-secluded Waliullah Madrassa has been the subject of unwelcome public scrutiny. Mr. Rizwan insists he knows nothing about the seminary's finances, nor about Mr. Patangia's whereabouts. Of one thing, however, Mr. Rizwan is certain. "Over the years", he says, "you come to know the basic character of a person, and I know the Maulana is not a terrorist".

Some 350 students from Ahmedabad and its surrounding villages attend Arabic and Urdu classes at the seminary, which zealously protects its wards from the modern world. Students have no access to television, newspapers or the internet. Unlike Madrassas run by other sects, this Tablighi Jamaat seminary seems to have retained the sect's historic contempt for all forms of knowledge other than the purely religious. Gujarati is not taught, for in communally-surcharged Ahmedabad, language has become a key marker of religious identity.

It was in this seminary, the CBI and police say, that Patangia recruited an 18-member terror cell whose members have now gone on trial at a special court in Ahmedabad. Politics and ideology, however, seems to play no role in the Waliullah Madrassa. Some students such as the 12-year-old Mohammad Musaib, were pulled out of government schools because their parents believed a religious education was more meaningful. Others attend formal schools for part of the day, and the seminary during their free hours. Mr. Rizwan seems little concerned about their career prospects. "Most of the children's parents have shops", he says, "so they can join the family business."

Many of the suspects' families insist the seminary had nothing to do with terrorism. Late last year, 22-year-old Anas Machiswala, who had for long worked with Mr. Patangia, asked his family for a loan of Rs. 10,000 to travel to Dubai and Kenya. Mr. Machiswala told his family he wanted to expand his kerbside leather-goods business. "My son's passport bears stamps for Dubai and Kenya," Sarfunnisa Machiswala insists, "on the same dates the police say he was training as a terrorist in Pakistan."

Police and CBI investigators do not buy the argument. Officials say they will introduce evidence during trial from the Kenyan High Commission in New Delhi during trial to show the Nairobi entry stamps on his passport are fake. Mr. Machiswala, investigators claim, flew on fake travel documents from Dubai to Karachi, and then received three months' weapons training. Perhaps ironically, Mr. Machiswala's passport photograph was the first he ever had made, for like Mr. Rizwan the terrorism suspect believed the practice contravened Islamic tenets.

Some terror cell suspects seem to inhabit a considerably less liberal world than that of their parents. Soon after leaving school, Shahnawaz Gandhi began attending Patangia's seminary. He discarded the pant and shirt he had worn while growing up for the Tablighi Jamaat's preferred ankle-length pyjama and loose, long jabba. Then, the young man stopped watching television, on the grounds that viewing graven images of any kind was just a step away from Islam's proscription of idolatry. By contrast, his father, Mohammadbhai Nanamian Gandhi, enjoys spending time listening to old film songs and bhajans.

Evidence, though, does not persuade many. "The only reason they have arrested by son," says Mohammad Habib Karimi, the father of 28-year-old Kalim Ahmad, another suspect, "is that he knew Patangia, which is not surprising since he lived just two houses away." "Haren Pandya's father has said that Narendra Modi had him killed to get rid of a political rival," Karimi continues, "so why don't the police go and arrest the Chief Minister? How is the word of some police informer any more credible than the word of Pandya's father?"

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