HOME AND FREE: Afroz with his mother

When Mohammed Afroz, alleged Al Qaida operative and international man of terror, was released on bail he didn't get mad at the Mumbai Police or threaten to get even with them. Instead, he looked back at his four months in jail and said all he had longed for in prison was mutton curry-not the eventual success of a global jehad or death to the evil empire of America but his mother's home-cooked mutton curry.

It was a farcical end to a case that had begun with the Mumbai Police landing what looked like one of their biggest catches ever. What they are left with now is raps on their knuckles for incorrectly applying the controversial anti-terrorism POTO, now POTA after its encatment, against 25-year-old Afroz.

Crime

MIXED SIGNALS Afroz trained in same flight school as 9/11 hijackers but police unable to prove deeper links. Three of four cases of robbery against Afroz discharged, no chargesheet filed in fourth. Police say Afroz spent about Rs 1 crore on pilot training, family say they paid the Rs 30 lakh spent. Afroz did not protest about being in custody for a month without being charged, refused legal help.

Following the December 13 attack on Parliament, the Mumbai Police and the Maharashtra Home Ministry painted Afroz out to be a hardened terrorist with his finger on the pulse of Osama bin Laden's plans for the world. In his confessional statement, Afroz said that suicide squads had planned to attack the Indian Parliament, that he had trained in the same flying school as a September 11 hijacker, and even that he had been recruited to fly a plane into the British House of Commons. In bragging about Afroz specially after Parliament was attacked and looking for all the credit for hooking such a big fish, the Mumbai Police and the Maharashtra Government made an error of judgement. The public coup has now turned into a public-relations disaster.

Justice (retd) Suresh Hosbet of the Bombay High Court was severe. "Afroz is the most perfect example of how the police can misuse POTA," he said. The simple fact is that there is no serious case against Afroz-least of all under POTA-because he had not committed any crime on Indian soil. At the time of the Afroz arrest last October, a senior intelligence officer involved in the investigation had admitted to India Today, "There is no case for us but he is great for intelligence inputs." Advocate Majid Memon now accuses the state of misusing POTA against Afroz only to keep him in custody for a long time. Had the police not done so, he says, it would not have served their interests during a lengthy and complicated investigation into the tailor's son. Larger political equations have helped Afroz: the Congress had raised strenuous objections to the enactment of POTA in Parliament. The Congress Government in Maharashtra could hardly then use the same law to keep Afroz in prison, specially since evidence that would hold up in court seemed hard to find.

The police had to drop the charges under POTA saying that Afroz could only be tried under sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). When a fresh chargesheet was filed on April 9, Afroz was booked under the IPC.

What has made matters worse for the Mumbai Police is the special trips senior officers took to the UK, US and Australia to investigate Afroz's alleged overseas links. The visits may have helped the Mumbai Police beef up their knowledge about global trends in crime-fighting, but seems to have failed to produce anything concrete against Afroz. A senior officer now justifies the trips saying that it has helped the Mumbai Police learn more about the functioning and financial networking of international terrorist organisations. Hardly adequate returns for taking an enormous amount of egg in the face.

What remain though are oddities in the Afroz story. He has never played the wronged victim: when the police took a month to chargesheet him, Afroz did not protest. Nor did he hire legal help to bail him out earlier. Every time he was produced in court, he appeared to be keen to stay in jail rather than go home, saying he wanted to complete a yoga and Art of Living course begun in prison. On being released, he said he wanted to go to Rishikesh for spiritual succour and become an Art of Living teacher. Afroz may have experienced epiphany in prison; because of him, though, the Mumbai Police must endure some of their darkest days.