Wife of blast suspect files habeas corpus plea

The wife of Kichan BuKari, who had been arrested in connection with the Bangalore blast case, has filed a habeas corpus petition in the Madurai Bench of the Madras High court.
The petitioner Jameela Banu claims that her husband is a social worker, and had been assisting senior lawyers in the Coimbatore bomb-blast case, which was likely to be heard by the Supreme Court this week and he had to be present along with his advocates at Delhi, she said.
Bukari was the coordinator of the Charitable Trust for Minorities, Coimbatore, she claimed.
The Special Investigation Team, probing the case relating to planting of a pipe bomb, allegedly targeting BJP leader L K Advani during his "Jan Chetna Yatra" in Madurai district in 2011, had questioned Bukari on April 18 on the whereabouts of the absconding accused in the pipe bomb case.

Bukari had told the SIT that he was not associated with the accused in that case. The SIT had threatened to foist false case against him, she alleged. As her family was subjected to "mental torture" by the SIT, they had come to Melapalayam from Coimbatore, she claimed.
She said on April 22, a DSP and two inspectors from the SIT took Bukari and two others into custody and they did not know where he had been detained.

Banu had sent representations to the Director General of Police and the DIG, SIT but did not get any response. She feared threat to Bukari and moved the court seeking directions to the SIT to produce her husband in court.

Yesterday, a Madurai report identified 36-year-old Kichan Bukari, an activist of banned Al-Umma, who was picked up at the central bus stand there when he was on his way to Tirunelveli from Chennai.
He was also a convict in the case relating to the 1998 serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore that claimed 58 lives and left more than 200 injured during the visit of senior BJP leader L K Advani to the city to address an election rally.
Bukari, hailing from Melapalayam in Tirunelveli district, had undergone 10 years jail term in the blast case, a report from Coimbatore said. He was also sentenced to life in three murder cases against him but released by Supreme Court.