In Kaprassery, in Kerala’s Ernakulam district, CAM Basheer is a faint memory
The radars of the security agencies may be trained on Chanayamparamba Abdulkhadar Muhammed Basheer, a wanted SIMI leader, but in his native village Kaprassery in Kerala’s Ernakulam district, Basheer is a faint memory. Not many recall that face. Basheer, 43, has been missing for 15 years now.
For the Chanayamparmba family, the return of its youngest son, dead or alive, is a distant dream. “We have suffered a lot of agony over the last 15 years. The charges levelled against him by the police and the media have made life miserable for us. Our children have to face embarrassing situations in school due to the terror tag attached to the family,” says Basheer’s brother Muhammed Kunji, a wholesale dealer of NCERT books in nearby Aluva town.
Son of the late Abdulkhadar and Beeyathu, Basheer scaled SIMI’s organisational ladder and went on to become its all-India president. Till 10 years ago, he would regularly telephone his brothers. When they asked Basheer about his whereabouts, he would simply laugh, says Kunji.
His family recalls that even as a child, Basheer used to speak out against social injustice. A good speaker, he had a view on most issues. “He did not even spare his community for exploiting poor Muslims. He was never an extremist,” Kunji says. After completing his diploma in aeronautical engineering, Basheer went to Bangalore for training, never to return.
Many in Kaprassery do not know where the house of the “most wanted terrorist” is located. The weather-beaten house—where his brother Akber, the only unemployed in the family, lives—wears a desolate look. Time has sped past the house, which, amidst the palatial residences of other family members, looks like an eyesore.
_SHAJU PHILIP

... contd.