Srinagar: The family and friends of Bilal Ahmad Kawa, arrested recently by Delhi police for alleged involvement in 2000 Red Fort attack case, on Saturday staged a protest in Press Colony here in Srinagar and demanded his immediate release.
The family said that Kawa was travelling to Delhi with his brother who was scheduled to see a doctor. “If he was suspect, why did not they arrest him before,” said a relative of Kawa. The family alleged that Indian media has made him a ‘terrorist’ without confirming the basic facts.
“Today the remand of ten days is completed. I want my brother to be home, we have a hope that he will be released,” said Bilal’s sister. “I think they have some wrong information about him,” she
said.
In a report submitted before chief judicial magistrate Srinagar, by SHO police
station Maharaj Gunj said that at no point in time in the past 17 years police had been informed about Kawa’s offence.
The report was submitted on an application filed by Fatima Begum, mother of Kawa, who contested Delhi Police claim the man from Old City was a “proclaimed offender.”
His mother had sought police’s version into Delhi police’s claims, saying if he was an offender, he would have been summoned by a court through local police.
The mother said her son is a businessman having a passport, GST number, PAN card, ration card and other documents a ‘respectable citizen of India’ possesses. “How can anybody live a normal life with his family while being a proclaimed offender in any subversive case?” she had asked in her application.
