Abdul Qaudeer- Ghost of a Communal Riot

Abdul Qadeer in his hospital bed. Pic by Imran Khan 

In 1990, a month after Lal Krishna Advani’s Rathyatra sent seismic shocks across India’s secular fabric, polarising it across the fault lines of communal identity, Hyderabad witnessed one of its deadliest riots. When the mindless slaughter and arson which started on December 8, were quelled four days later by the military, it left over 150 people dead.
Abdul Quadeer is one of the ghosts left behind by the riots.


It was in the early hours of December 12 that Constable Abdul Quadeer pulled out his gun against his superior ACP Sataiah and shot him dead at point-blank range. The Andhra Pradesh Government argued in court that Quadeer was a communal fanatic and demanded the death sentence for Quadeer. The judge did not buy the state’s evidence of a communal motive but in his judgement sentencing the 29-year-old ex-policeman to ‘life imprisonment’, chose to remain silent on Quadeer’s motive for shooting Sataiah from behind during patrol duty in the riot-torn Old City in Hyderabad.


Speaking from a bed in Gandhi hospital in Hyderabad, Abdul Qadeer, says paradoxically, that he did it to uphold the law. “What I did, I did it, in the interest of saving innocent lives. The police was firing on innocent Muslims. They were doing the rounds and shooting down people of one community. It was criminal and against the law, what they were doing,” he said. Looking much older than his 49 years, Quadeer, who is undergoing treatment for diabetes and hypertension, does not know that doctors at the Gandhi Hospital has advised amputation of his left leg.


Qadeer who has spent 22 years in prison had to undergo the pain of watching his four children (two sons and two daughters) grow up without their father. He was barely four years into his marriage with Sabira Begum (40) when he was incarcerated . Consigned to a life with nothing to cheer about, she laments the additional burden of raising her four children on her own. “My husband suffers from various ailments diabetes, blood pressure, and mental depression. He has already served his sentence, then what is the point of keeping him now?,” she asks.


In the inflamed communal atmosphere that polarised the state after the Babri Masjid
demolitions, Qadeer says he was severely tortured in jail and that the injuries he received from torture and maltreatment is responsible for his present condition. Even after completing 14 years of his life sentence in 2004, both the government and the courts have refused to remit his sentence. The same year, the AP government blocked his release through a government order (GO). In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in a different case that it was up to the government to decide whether to release life convicts after 14 years.
However, in AP as well as in other states, life convicts are automatically released on
completing 14 years and it is only in rare cases that the government decides to prolong their sentences. Quadeer alleges that top police brass of the state is interfering with his release to punish him for killing one of their own.


Quadeer alleges that ACP Sattiah was in the pay of politicians who manufactured the
riots for their own gains and enforced and sustained it through the men in khaki. He says the officer used the police force to fire shops in Muslims neighbourhoods and often directly targeted Muslims men, women and children fleeing from Hindu mobs or goons hired by politicians. While the actions of an individual officer in those strife-ridden periods are impossible to establish, activists and political observers say that the police force in the state had definitely become communalised in the aftermath of the riots. Noted Human Rights activist and revolutionary poet Vara Vara Rao points out that, many of the top police officials turned to Hindutva openly after retiring from service. Rao cites the example of Aravind Rao, who post-retirement has started discoursing on Hindutva.


The then Chief minister of Andhra Pradesh Dr. Marri Chenna Reddy of Congress was a champion of the Telangana movement. In 1990 he was sworn in as CM for the second time when the riots took place. Political observers and various news reports of this period declare the riots to be an insider job, particularly of leaders from the Rayalseema region. Marri Chenna Reddy himself went on record in the State Assembly and blamed a group within congress of triggering the riots to dislodge him. His ire was particularly directed at YS Rajashekhar Reddy, then a factional leader within the Congress party.


In 2004 when Rajashekhar Reddy came back to power, several convicts who had
received life sentences were released including several Naxalites, underwold don
Suri ( convicted in the Jubilee hills bomb blasts case) and arms smuggler Mohammed
Mujibuddin who was serving life for killing an IPS officer, says Lateef Mohammed
Khan, General Secretary of Civil Liberties Union. “The Muslim community had
demanded for Qadeer’s release; in fact the community had objected to Mujibuddin’s
release. Muslims are not able to understand why he is not being freed,” adds Lateef,
whose organisation has petitioned the president for Qadeer’s immediate release on
humanitarian grounds. Interestingly Mujibuddin, who is rumoured to have been released at the behest of Jagan Mohan Reddy, is now serving time for crimes committed after he was freed.


Members of the civil society also suspect that Qadeer is a victim of the politics within the various Muslim political parties that command the Muslim vote in the state. As Qadeer is a hero in the community, various political groups within the community are vying to take the credit of his release for their political benefit, says Lateef Khan. Fingers are being pointed towards the largest and most dominant Muslim party of the city All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM or MIM) which has 7 MLA's and Asaduddin Owaisi as MP. Critics point out that, MIM which is the coalition partner in the ruling state Congress government had earlier got several prisoners released on the basis of their support. However this time it is alleged, they have not shown much enthusiasm as different players are also vying for the release


MIM supremo Asaduddin Owaisi however rubbishes all these claims and terms them as propaganda on the part of his opponents. According to Owaisi, the MIM has been unable to secure Quadeer’s release as the police establishment is actively resisting it. He said “I am not the President of India that I enjoy such an authority over the government that I can get Qadeer released in one day. But it is not true that we are not trying, we raised this issue in Assembly, and made a representation to the Chief Minister to release him. But whenever we try to push for his release police leadership comes in between the consultations and reminds the government that he killed a police officer of higher rank. The police lobby is the biggest hurdle in his release.”