2 weeks on; after SC noitce, still no news of 'deported' man

NEW DELHI: All she wants to know is her husband's whereabouts. "At least tell us where Fasih is,'' cries the 22-year-old - a bride of eight months and two months pregnant - whose fairytale life ended two weeks ago in Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia.

It was the afternoon of May 13. "We had just packed our bags, and were having lunch after namaz. We were to shift to a new city as my husband was getting transferred, and he was excitedly telling me about our prospects there,'' recalls Nikhat Parveen, sitting at a relative's house in southeast Delhi.

An hour later, their dreams had turned to dust. Saudi and Indian plainclothesmen and women arrived and rummaged through their bags before taking away Fasih Mehmood, 29. Since then, Nikhat's only contact with him has been a brief phone call from a Saudi number at her in-laws' house.

"The call came around 3pm on May 19. He hurriedly said that he was innocent and hopeful of being released, before the line disconnected. He sounded severely stressed,'' says Nikhat, who married Fasih last September at his village in Darbhanga, Bihar, but started living with him only in March this year.

It was a good match. Nikhat was in her first year of MBA while Fasih, who did his mechanical engineering from Bhatkal, Karnataka, in 2000-04, had been working in Saudi Arabia since 2007. Although he had repeatedly entered and left the country from Delhi since then, security agencies claim he managed funding for the terrorist group, Indian Mujahideen, and had left India in 2006. He is said to be close to IM's founders, brothers Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal.

But the charges are not on record. There has been no official communication with Fasih's family. "They insist he is yet to be deported and is being questioned in Saudi Arabia. They should at least tell us where Fasih is," says Nikhat.

Fasih was cleverly led into a trap, she says. "That afternoon, we got two calls from unknown numbers, asking where Fasih was at the time. He said the callers were from Yanbu, the city where we were moving to, and went to pick them up. He came back an hour later with four Saudi officials and two Indians. They searched our luggage for over an hour, seized the laptop and two mobiles and took away Fasih, saying he was wanted in India and would be deported the same night.''

For two days, Nikhat tried to contact the local police, the Saudi foreign office and the Indian embassy, but unable to obtain any information she flew to Delhi on May 15, and went home to Patna with her brother.

"Two days later, when a local paper reported that Fasih was a top IM man, I decided to rush back to Delhi,'' says Nikhat, adding, "I know he is innocent, that is the reason why the agencies have not gone public about their catch''. With anger and frustration brimming in her eyes, she says Fasih's detention violates Indian and international laws.

Since May 16, the family has knocked on many doors. "We met Union home secretary RK Singh but he denied any knowledge of the case. We have also met the Bihar DGP and top officers of Delhi Police's special cell. We have appealed to the ministry of external affairs, the National Commission for Minorities, the National Human Rights Commission, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, the Saudi ambassador to India and the department of NRI affairs. But there's no news of Fasih,'' says Nikhat.

She's worried about her father-in-law, Dr Firoz Ahmed, a medical officer at Banipatty in Bihar, and mother-in-law Amra Jamal, who have given up eating. "It is hard for me to look at them. Why are they targeting our family? If he is guilty, explain the charges against him. But why torture an innocent man who loved his weekends and the daily dose of cricket?"

Source: TOI