Yahya Kammukutty (second from right) with his family. Yahya Kammukutty (second from right) with his family.

Eight years ago, it seemed that Yahya Kammukutty, then 33, had the world at his feet. This son of a labourer who used to cut stones at a quarry near Kodiyathur village in Kozhikode had become a software engineer for a multinational in Bangalore — and had even started dreaming of starting his own company.

But then, in February 2008, that world came crashing down. Kammukutty was arrested by Karnataka Police on charges of being part of a “SIMI module” that had conspired “to spread Islam throughout the world and to commence jihad throughout India”.

Today, after seven years in jail followed by his acquittal last month with the judge finding gaping holes in the prosecution’s case, he says that with a wife and four children and his parents to take care of, he doesn’t know “what I will do” despite his professional experience.

“Technology has changed a lot in these seven years. It is a big gap. I am convinced that the acquittal is not the end of my ordeal. My life is ruined,” he said.

Speaking about his parents, Neeroppil Veerankutty and Kadija, Kammukutty says they had four children who depended on their father’s daily wages. “He had to leave school to work but was determined that I study,” he said.

He made it to an engineering college — the “first graduate in my family” — and was offered a job by Tata Unisys in Bangalore in 1996 when he hadn’t yet graduated. The money he sent home, he says, was enough for his father to become a partner in a grocery store and educate his younger children — they moved into a new house too.

In 1999, he joined Wipro-GE Medical System, now Wipro-GE Healthcare, as a software engineer. But in 2007, he became a freelancer after losing his job over what he claims is a misunderstanding over his dream of starting his own company.

“In December 2007, I went for Haj and returned in the first week of January. On February 18, 2008, late in the evening, two policemen knocked on my door and said ‘sir’ wanted to talk to me. They told me I would be back in 15 minutes,” he said.

His pregnant wife and three young children waited. He didn’t return.

Police records show Kammukutty was arrested only on February 21, but he claims policemen “blindfolded me and took me somewhere in Shivaji Nagar, where they kept me for three days”. After his arrest was recorded, Kammakutty says, police took him to his home for a search and recovered some cash and “books on religion and computers”. “The DySP accompanying me said GE had filed a case of theft, saying I had stolen some information. But the next day, when I thought I was going to face theft charges, the DySP said my case was not in Bangalore but in Hubli. Then, I knew it was something serious,” he said.

During the first three days of his detention, Kammakutty says “police officers asked me about some people who were absconding”. “I kept repeating I had no idea, and they tortured me,” he alleged.

On the last day of his 14-day remand, Kammakutty claims he was woken up at 2.30 am in Vidyagiri police station in Dharwad and asked by IO Khote “to sign my voluntary confession”. “It was in Kannada. I couldn’t read it, so I told him I won’t sign,” he said. “He said sign it and go to jail or face another 14 days in police custody. I couldn’t take 14 more days of torture, so I signed it,” he said.

“Now that I know what I was made to sign, I don’t know whether to cry or laugh. Apparently, I had helped build a mosque with an aim to bring down the government,” he said.

Elaborating on the case that landed him in jail, Kammukutty said it grew from what initially was a case of confiscating a motorbike without any papers from two people in Honnali — one of them the son of a religious scholar who was then in jail in Ahmedabad (he was acquitted in 2010) — into “a major terror conspiracy case” centred around Hubli.

According to him, the police also traced one of the two in Honnali to a hostel in KMC where there was a dispute with ABVP over Muslim students organising group prayers.

“In 2008, Mohammad Asif and Razziuddin Nasir, the son of the scholar, were arrested for driving a motorbike without papers. The police scanned Nasir’s records and that was the beginning. Asif was a student in KMC so they took him to the hostel and recovered religious books,” he said, adding the case got “terror links” from there before it reached his doorstep. “My family has suffered immensely,” he said. “I had a career. I had done well. Now there is nothing. My parents had suffered a lot in life. Now they are broken.”

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