By IndiaTomorrow.net,
Hyderabad, 16 Oct 2014: A fact finding time consisting of eminent citizens have Thursday termed the death of 11-year-old boy Shaik Musatafa inside Mehdipatnam Garrison as “purely a case of sexual assault and murder” by two military persons. They accused the military officials of shielding the perpetrators of the heinous crime. The Army has denied the charges.
“This case is purely a case of sexual assault and murder of an 11-year old boy Shaik Musatafa by two military persons,” they alleged. The group of eminent citizens have demanded that a family member of the boy should be given a government employment immediately and rupees 20 lakhs should be given to the family in the form of compensation.
The team has found that the harassment of the local civilians by the military personnel is not a new thing. It is going on since last few years and now since six months the harassment has increased. According to Shaik Moinuddin, paternal uncle of the victim and the local people living in Siddiq Nagar near the cantonment said that before 1995 the area was open without any fencing or gate. Later it was fenced and the gate was fixed.
The incident led to widespread protests by the locals that forced police to register a murder case against ‘unknown’ army personnel. Mustafa’s family and locals of Siddiq Nagar had alleged two army personnel had set the boy, who used to live with his parents inside the garrison, ablaze, even as the Army has denied the allegation.
Members of the fact finding team interacting with Police official at Humayun Nagar Police station in Hyderabad.
“This harassment is also a conspiracy by the military personnel to evacuate the local civilians from their place and occupy even that piece of land held by the civilians,” the fact finding team said.
“The military officers very well know who the culprits are, but they are shielding those criminals. The military officers should immediately court martial those criminals and restore moral values in the army personnel,” they said.
The fact finding team comprised Kaneez Fathima, Adv. Gulam Rabbani, Adv. Ismail Khan (Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee), D. Kotesh and Gurram Seetaramulu (Research scholars, English and Foreign Languages University), D. Nagaraju, Sogra Begum (Activists), Tathagata Sengupta (Asst. Professor, Hyderabad Central University (HCU), Adv. Greeshma Rai, Kaveri Indira (Faculty Fellow, HCU), and Arpita Kanjilal (Research Scholar, HCU).
Members of the fact finding interacting with family members and locals at Siddiq Nagar in Hyderabad.
Earlier during the course of investigation, a police sniffer dog had gone into a washerman’s room four times inside the garrison, where kerosene is used to burn coal for laundry work. The family members had also been alleging that Army personnel had set the boy ablaze by pouring kerosene on him.
The boy also in his dying declaration, and also separately to doctors, reportedly had said that two Army personnel had called him and assaulted him and later taken to a room where kerosene was poured on him and he was set ablaze. “The boy fell few yards away from the room as he was engulfed in the flames,” witnesses were quoted as saying in media reports.
Police officials have said that they were looking at the case from two perspectives – attempted sodomy and the second whether the boy jumped into the military area which could have angered the military men. The jawans regularly ask local children to purchase cigarette and other commodities for them since the nearest general store is located in Siddiq Nagar, where the boy lived.
