A pall of gloom has enveloped a small room in the nondescript building in the dingy bylanes of Pemantle Street in central Kolkata for the last few days.

For residents inside, there was no Eid celebration on Tuesday. Hamida Bewa (name changed on request), mother-in-law of Mukhtar Ahmed Sheikh, arrested for fraudulent dealings in SIM cards and possible Mumbai terror links, waits for her daughter to arrive from Ka-shmir and her son-in-law to be released. She knows for certain that Mukh-tar was a policeman and not a terrorist.

Hamida told The Indian Express: “ Mukhtar frequently visited Kolkata for official purposes. I know he is a policeman. Everybody here knows the same. He is not a terrorist. When he came to Kolkata in October, he told me that he has come for some official work of J&K Police. I am waiting for the Kashmir police to come here and bail him out.”

The Kolkata police, who claimed that Mukhtar had collected 32 SIM cards when he came to Kolkata in October, are now tight-lipped after the revelations of his connections with the J&K Police.

“We are awaiting a reply from J&K Police regarding his background. We have written to them on Monday with details of Mukhtar and his pictures. He has committed a crime of buying SIM cards illegaly,” said Rajiv Kumar, Special Additional Commissioner of Kolkata police and in-charge of the Special Task Force.

Hamida said: “Mukhtar, my daughter and their children were supposed to visit us for Eid. Now, look what has happened to this innocent man.”

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