Author: Express News Service
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: May 13, 2006
Introduction: Some neighbours suspected Chippa
was associated with banned SIMI
The Delhi police say Muhammed Ali Chippa was
a Laskhar-e-Toiba terrorist trained in Pakistan.
But to his family members, he was the responsible
son - quiet and dutiful, taking good care of his six sisters and mentally-retarded
elder brother. He recently asked one of sisters, recently widowed, to come
and stay with the family again.
Chippa was reserved, religious and would pray
regularly, but other wise he was just another Jamalpur lad - he'd say hello
to neighbours and friends, go out to the movies.
If there was anything about his lifestyle
that now raises eyebrows it was his absences - sometimes for two or three
months. But the family didn't think that unusual: they always thought he was
caught up in business.
"Even this time we thought the same way,"
said his sister Fatema, speaking to Express at their house in the Kachhia
Sheri lane of Jamalpur. "We had his card with us and he'd asked us to
hand it over to people who came looking for him and tell them to call him."
After clearing his Std XII, Chippa took a
course in computer hardware at some private institutions and then started
his own business Advance-Tech Systems.
"The only tension he had was of making
money for the family," said his sister.
Their father Chandbhai is too old to work,
and the family has rented out the first floor of their house to a shop-keeper
to augment what Chippa brought in.
The family can't believe Chippa could have
been involved with terrorists but are aware of the grave charges he fades.
His parents have gone to Delhi to meet him in custody. His sisters keep asking
if he'd walk free someday.
"We never thought such a thing would
happen to us," said Fatema.
Family members and friends say there was nothing
that happened to the family that could have provoked him to join a terrorist
outfit: they have never suffered in any communal riot.
People in the neighbourhood described Chippa
as "a straightforward guy", and describe his arrest in Delhi as
"shocking." Some of them say that the only whiff of suspicion about
him -and that too occurring in after sight- was vague talk that he was associated
with the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).
