Basheer

Lucknow, Aug. 17: Sabeeha, seven months pregnant with her first child, refuses to believe her “good husband” could be the mastermind of the Ahmedabad blasts.

Mufti Abu Basheer, arrested from the mud hut where his parents, wife and four siblings live in Uttar Pradesh, has been taken to Ahmedabad. Police said the 22-year-old madarsa teacher headed the Indian Mujahideen, which claimed responsibility for the explosions that killed 57 people.

“I don’t believe he could commit such a cruel act. He used to always talk about Allah and our life. We live like beggars but he was never bitter,” Sabeeha said over phone from the house of a Samajwadi Party leader she had approached for help.

She would be crushed to know the police now also suspect her husband’s involvement in the Uttar Pradesh blasts of November 2007. Additional director-general Brij Lal said: “We are working on his former associates.”

Four days after the shy, 5-foot-tall man was taken away from Binapara village in Azamgarh, 250km from Lucknow, his 20-year-old wife asked if it was a crime to “be poor and to pray”.

“He is the only bread-earner in the family. Who will feed me and my unborn child?” she said. The two got married on May 6 last year. “He was not only full of concern for me but also his parents.”

The police raided their house yesterday and Sabeeha claimed they took away some money Basheer had given her, a charge the cops denied.

Sabeeha said she had never been to Hyderabad, where her husband worked. The police said yesterday that on a visit to Hyderabad in 2007, Basheer had introduced a woman as his wife.

The Anti-Terrorist Squad said Basheer earned Rs 3,000 from his madarsa job and wondered where he got the money from for frequent visits to Ahmedabad, Delhi and Azamgarh and how he supported his family. “He would stay away for long but we used to get money through his friends,” Sabeeha said, adding that they went without food at times.

District authorities said the family was categorised as below poverty line. Basheer, the eldest of six brothers and one sister, was the only one with a regular job. Two younger brothers are day labourers in Mumbai and Delhi. Their father, who owns a small plot and weaves fruit baskets, is unwell. The youngest siblings go to school at Saraimeer, the village 2km away infamous as gangster Abu Salem’s home.