Author:
Publication: The Jang
Date: October 2, 2002
URL: http://jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2002-daily/02-10-2002/world/w11.htm
A Muslim militant shot by police
commandos was given a hero's burial Tuesday by weeping relatives and admirers
in the southern Indian city of Madurai, witnesses said.
Imam Ali, the key accused in the
1993 bombing of an office of the rightwing Hindu group Rashtriya Swayamsewak
Sangh (RSS, National Volunteers Corp), was killed along with four other
people during a police raid on their hideout in the southern city of Bangalore
on Sunday.
Ali, 32, whose body was brought
for burial to a mosque in Madurai, 400 kilometres (248 miles) south of
Madras, was also accused of plotting to assassinate Deputy Prime Minister
Lal Krishna Advani and other Hindu leaders and bomb temples in southern
India.
The city police had billed Ali as
the most-wanted Muslim militant in Tamil Nadu state. A crowd of admirers
and mourners, mostly local Muslims and relatives from Ali's nearby hometown
of Melur, chanted prayers, wept and shouted anti-police slogans as the
slain militant's bullet-ridden body arrived for burial.
They hoisted black flags on rooftops
in the Muslim neighbourhood of Sungampa in Madurai, and insulted policemen
guarding the burial site, witnesses said. The crowd mobbed two ambulances
which brought the bodies of all five militants to the mosque and during
the Islamic burial blocked journalists or policemen from entering. A senior
police official said he was surprised by the show of solidarity for Ali
who had carried a reward of 500,000 rupees (10,400 dollars) on his head.
The relatives had initially refused
to take possession of the bodies and were so embarrassed that they covered
their faces when they went to Bangalore to identify the dead, a senior
official said.
The police said Ali had links with
Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence secret service and had received
training in Kashmir from the Hizbul Mujahedin militant group as well as
in Bangladesh. Along with another militant, Ali had escaped from police
custody near Madurai on March 7 this year.
