[Reader-list] SIMI chief won’t fight ban anymore, says ‘mindless’

[Mayur]

http://www.indianexpress.com/story-print/614202/



[image: Indian Express]

SIMI chief won’t fight ban anymore, says ‘mindless’
*Krishnadas Rajagopal* Posted online: Monday , May 03, 2010 at 0157 hrs
*New Delhi : * Dr Shahid Badar, the chief of the banned Students’ Islamic
Movement of India (SIMI), has written to a Special Tribunal saying he does
not want to fight the government anymore, but intends to quietly practise
Unani medicine in his native village.

“I completed my Bachelor of Unani Medicine and Surgery (BUMS) programme from
Aligarh Muslim University in the year 1998 and run a small clinic in village
Manchobha, where I live, and where I offer my services to people
irrespective of their race, caste, class or religion. This is my practise of
Islam,” he wrote to Justice Sanjiv Khanna, who presides over the Unlawful
Activities (Prevention) Tribunal, in an affidavit yesterday.

The tribunal exclusively hears pleas of organisations banned by the Centre
for alleged unlawful activities, and is presided over by a judge of the
Delhi High Court.

Since September 2001, the 38-year-old Badar has been involved in a lone
legal battle against four consecutive bans on SIMI. The Centre had declared
the organisation an “unlawful association” after the 9/11 terror attacks on
the World Trade Center in New York. Badar’s affidavit is in reply to a
government notification for a fifth ban on SIMI.

In his affidavit, Badar says: “My medical practice, and through it service
to the community, is very important to me. For several of my clients, I am
the only source of medical care. I am therefore not in a position to leave
village Manchobha, Azamgarh District, Uttar Pradesh, for extended periods of
time.”

Previously, Badar had submitted in courts that SIMI had “ceased to exist”
and there were “no members” left, forcing him to litigate alone. But the
government has consistently maintained that SIMI is still active and
“financially sound”.

 “I want to put an end to this mindless, futile, unequal, unethical and
unjust exercise... I have therefore chosen not to contest the declaration of
the Central Government,” he says.

Badar, who was arrested in a night raid at SIMI’s Delhi office in Zakir
Nagar in September 2001 and has been on bail since 2004, states: “I have
never committed any offence whatsoever, either during the period when the
declarations have been effective, or before the organisation was declared an
unlawful association.”

He points out that, since the first ban on September 27, 2001, not a single
case against any member of the association under the Unlawful Activities
(Prevention) Act, 1967, has “attained finality before any court of law”.

“Every case registered against members of the association has ended, either
in acquittal or discharge of the accused,” he wrote to the tribunal.

As per government records filed before the Supreme Court in the year 2008,
there were 349 cases registered against SIMI activists across the country
before February 2006 and there have been 53 more since then.

Badar in his affidavit refers to Justice Gita Mittal, the earlier judge of
the tribunal, who on August 5, 2008, refused to confirm with a Union Home
Ministry opinion that SIMI was an unlawful association. The Supreme Court,
the very next day, had cancelled Justice Mittal’s order and re-placed the
ban on SIMI for the fourth time. Badar alleges that neither he nor his
lawyers was properly intimated of the developments both in the tribunal and
the Supreme Court.

The government had argued that three of the 12 states in which SIMI has been
found active — Delhi, Ahmedabad and Bangalore — had already witnessed
blasts.

“Its members being students and youths, SIMI is easily influenced by
hardcore Muslim terror organisations operating within the country and
abroad,” the government affidavits had stated in the Supreme Court.