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'If he is an ISI agent, why would they release him?'

September 13, 2007

On September 1, Maqsood Ahmad was sleeping at his Malakpet home. His sister Rehana Begum, expecting her husband, who works in an IT company in Hitech City, answered a knock on the door at 2 am.

Pushing aside her husband, a bunch of policemen barged into the house, she says. The policemen in plainclothes, who had apparently followed her husband from work, asked for Maqsood. Begum says the policemen then entered a room where the women of the house were sleeping despite her pleading with them not to do so.

They picked up Maqsood, 26, who was sleeping in the tiny living room, put him into a waiting car and sped away, Begum says.

In Maqsood's case, like Junaid, the police said they were looking for him in past cases.

"The police arrested him on March 31 and said he was an ISI agent. They kept him in custody for many days and released him. If he is an ISI agent, why would they release him?" asks his sister. "From then on he couldn't do anything. He quit his job of five years and has been at home."

Trouble for Maqsood, Begum says, began when he went to Saudi Arabia for Umra in July 2006. "Soon after he came back, the police started following him. In March, they arrested him and said he had gone to Pakistan and Bangladesh for training. They said they had tapped our phone and came to know that he went to these places for training," she says.

On September 1, she says, the family got into another car and followed the police car.

"Since we have experienced the high handedness of the police once, we did not want to take any chances this time. We followed them for some distance when they changed roads and sped off. We went searching from one police station to the other for five days, when we got to know that he was produced in court."

A couple of days after the police produced Maqsood in court on September 5 the family was allowed to meet him in jail. "He said they were giving him electric shocks and that the other boys who were arrested along with him were also beaten up brutally."

"They are asking my brother to confess that he conspired along with Shahid Bilal," she says.

"If they know all this, why don't they provide proof, arrest him in a proper manner and try him? Why do they have to sneak up on us and arrest a man who they had released only a couple of months ago?"

What this means for the family of 10 is that their breadwinner is without a job and may probably never get one again even if he is absolved of the charges.

"My father works as a lift operator in the state government secretariat," says Begum. "My brother's salary was what used to sustain us. Five of my siblings are still either in college or school. Maqsood was the sole financial support for the family. Now what will happen to my other brothers and sisters?" she asks.

Also read: What the police say about Maqsood Ahmad
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