Social isolation, stigma plague Zia Ul Haq’s kin

Hyderabad: Four-year-old Madhia Anjum was not born when Hyderabad police had picked up her father Zia Ul Haq from his house at idi Bazaar. Cops, who came to detain his brother alleging that he misbehaved with a woman, took Haq along with them. However, after three days, the family read in the newspapers that Haq was a “terrorist”, who had planted explosives at the Odeon Theatre at RTC crossroads.

Little Madhia has now started going to kindergarten, she or her two elder brothers, who studies in lower primary school, still do not know why her father has to be inside a prison. As a local court has acquitted Haq from the bomb blast case, his distressed family now hopes that he will come out clean in the second case, an arms recovery case, in the higher court.

He was convicted in the case and sentenced to seven years by the First Additional Metropolitan Sessions Judge in January this year. With the acquittal in the blast case, his family believes that his innocence will be proven in the higher court. “Our lives have been miserable after his arrest. We were socially isolated, and the stigma even haunted my little kids. We had to move to my brother’s house since my husband was not there to look after us,” said a teary eyed Ms Amina Fatima, Haq’s wife.

Haq was arrested just three and a half years after their marriage. They were blessed with two boys, and Ms Amina was pregnant when the police came to detain Haq. “In the school, when other students’ fathers come to pick them up, my kids would ask where was their father. I had to lie till recently. I would say he had gone to stay in his native town. When they started understanding things I started taking them to jail to meet their father. Since he was lodged in the Warangal prison, that was also a hard task,” added Haq’s wife Ms Amina Fatima.

Haq’s family members say that the allegations of the police and the National Investigation Agency were cooked up. The police had not found any weapons or explosive from his house, and the entire evidence were planted. They also said that that the allegations of Haq being trained by Lashkar-e-Taiba was a concocted story. Haq was a cab driver in the city and had married in 2007. The NIA had claimed that they had intercepted a phone call between Haq and a Pakistani national, and they were planning to carry out more terror attacks in the country.