Mumbai: Detained youths return home

The six city boys who were detained by Gujarat police on suspicion while on a visit to a dargah in Vadodara reached their homes in suburban Kurla on Wednesday. However, they first had to visit a local police station where their statements were recorded because one of them misplaced his bag in a taxi and after noticing an envelope of Gujarat police among the belongings, the Chunabhatti police had asked them to visit the police station.

Of the six, Mohammed Jamil (28), Ahmed Raza (22), Sayed Rehan (18) and Mohammad Sabir (21) stay near Gazi Baba Dargah in Kurla. They told The Asian Age that they were allegedly detained due to “over enthusiasm” of a local municipal corporator. But they said the Gujarat and Mumbai police did not over-react they did their best to verify their bonafides and did not harass them. Salim Siddiqui and Samadhan Kakade were also detained but they live in another part of Kurla.

When they were returning to Mumbai on Wednesday morning after being released from detention on Tuesday night, Jamil misplaced his bag in a taxi which somehow reached the Chunabhatti police station. On finding an envelope of Gujarat police, the Chunabhatti police called these boys to police station and recorded their statement before handing over the bag. The youths spent almost three hours in the police station.

Raza, Rehan and Sabir visited a dargah in Yakutpura at Vadodara on Sunday. As they were visiting for the first time, Jamil asked them to clean the premises and he along with Samadhan and Siddiqui went to have tea. Meanwhile, Rehan borrowed water from a nearby house to wash the premises but when Raza also went to same house the lady staying there got suspicious and asked him who was he and why he had come there. The woman was not convinced when they told her they came from Mumbai to visit the dargah. The woman called Chandrakant Thakker, a local corporator who was passing by on a motorcycle.

“We showed them our Aadhar card and other documents to prove that it was a normal visit to dargah but Thakker did not listen to us and not only called police but also informed about us to media and forced police to at least register an NC (non-cognisable complaint) against us,” said Jamil.