Yaseen Bhatkal produced in court; denies plan to escape

Yaseen Bhatkal, an accused in the Dilsukhnagar bomb blast in Hyderabad and founder of terrorist group Indian Mujahideen on Monday denied that he was planning to escape from the prison.

Yaseen, who along with three other accused of the bomb blast case was produced in Ranga Reddy district court on Monday, threw a piece of paper towards the reporters which the police immediately impounded. later, the police said that Bhatkal wrote on the paper that the recent media reports about him were wrong.

Sources said that in the letter, which he threw from the window of the police van, Bhatkal also said that his life was under threat from the police.

Originally, he was to be produced before the court on July 2 but he refused to come out of the jail fearing for his life. At the next appearance on July 4 also he resisted the attempt of the authorities to take him to the court. When he was brought to the court on Monday he created a sensation by throwing a letter. Sources said that Bhatkal will be shifted to Rajasthan on a transfer warrant in connection with another case.

The fears of Bhatkal that he may be bumped off were being seen in the context of the April 7 incident in which Telagnana police shot dead five undertrials including a terror suspect Viqaur Ahmad while they were being brought from Warangal to Hyderabad to be produced before the court. Viqaur also had repeatedly expressed fears that the police will kill him in a staged-encounter. Yaseen Bhatkal’s denial came within a day of his mother Rihana Sidibapa expressing apprehensions that police might bump off her son in a fake encounter.

Yaseen’s name recently figured in the headlines with some reports claiming that during his telephonic conversation with his wife he said he will soon escape from jail with help from Damascus (capital of Syria). The report emanating from Delhi had claimed that this was found by an intelligence agency monitoring the conversation over the phone. However, the authorities in Charalapally Central Jail in Hyderabad strongly denied the reports and said that Bhatkal spoke to his wife and mother over landline phone, a facility granted by the court and not over any mobile phone as claimed in the report.

Deputy Inspector General of Police (Prisons) of Telangana, A Narasimha said that there was no question of Bhatkal or any other jail inmate using a mobile phone. “It is baseless and untrue”, he said pointing out that strict security arrangements and procedures were in place which makes smuggling of a mobile into the jail impossible.

The court had granted permission to Bhatkal to speak to his family over phone twice a week in last February. “Since then, he spoke to his wife and mother 27 times and every time the conversation was recorded,” he said. The official added that the entire conversation of Bhatkal was recorded and handed over to the investigating agencies and there was no mention of any escape plan. Under the phone facility the prisoners can talk to their family upto a maximum of five minutes after which the line automatically gets cut off, the authorities pointed out.

Meanwhile, according to a report from Bhatkal, the home town of Yaseen, his mother alleged that there was a conspiracy by the police to kill her son. She said that Yaseen spoke to her many times and said that he feared the police will kill him in an encounter. She told the reporters that the false reports about his alleged escape plan to Syria were part of this conspiracy. “He is in a high security jail. How can he escape,” she asked.

17 people had died in the twin bomb blast at the busy Dilsukhnagar bus stop in Hyderabad on February 21, 2013. Yaseen Bhatkal, one of the main suspects in the blast was arrested on August 28 in the same year on the India-Nepal border at Motihari in Bihar and was chargesheeted along with three others.