Police make 'dead Muslim', an accused in Samjhauta Express case, later apologise

Ghulam Rasool had died in 2005 but two years after his death the Haryana police reached his Seelampur house and asked his wife Nazima to tell him the location of her 'terrorist husband'.

Nazima showed all papers including her husband's death certificate to the Haryana and GRP squads but despite the local residents confirming his death, they took the elderly widow forcefully with them to Haryana for interrogation.

The Panipat police and Railway police had already booked Ghulam Rasul under various sections of IPC for engineering the Samjhauta Express blast. However, as the issue got publicised, top police officials came in picture and subsequently apologised for the 'mistake'.

It happened in Delhi, the national capital, and newspapers splashed it especially the Urdu press and a few news channels. Nazima somehow got out of this trouble but would it have been easy for her had the incident taken place somewhere else. The police needed somebody dead and they could have put the blame on a dead man and even identified him amongst the faceless corpses that were found, and patted their own back for solving the case.

Now why did they zero in on this man. He worked as an informer for police until two years back and so the cops knew a lot about him and perhaps felt it fit to frame the dead man and claiming to have 'solved' the case.

Delhi's Urdu roznama Hindustan Express carried the news with the headline 'Leejiye ab to saahab-e-qabr Musalmaan bhi ho gaye dahshatgard' with the sub-headline 'Haryana police ke be-sharmi aur GRP ki haivaaniyat' and the slug: do saal qabl rahlat farmaane vaale Ghulam Rasool par Samjhauta saanihe ka sehraa Daalne kii behuuda harkat...