Twenty-year-old Parvez Rasool wouldn’t ever have imagined that he would spend his Diwali in the Bangalore Police interrogation room.

Rasool, a promising young cricketer hailing from the Anantnag district of Jammu & Kashmir, arrived in Bangalore from Bhubaneswar on Friday evening with the J&K under-22 team, and was arrested on Saturday morning after the police claimed to have zeroed in on his room at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on the basis of alerts obtained from bomb detection equipment. Mehrajuddin, a room mate of Rasool, was also detained and questioned before being released.

The J&K team officials have complained to the Karnataka State Cricket Association about the incident and have called it discriminatory. “Are we paying the price of being residents of Jammu & Kashmir?” one young player asked.

“First they checked our belongings and said they were fine, so we all went to have breakfast. Later, the police came again to check and called Parvez and Mehraj and took them to the police station,” S Bilal, manager of the J&K team said. Bilal added that after Pervez returned from the police station, he broke down in fear.

“I know him since the last five years, he is a very simple guy and is the next big thing from J&K. It will be real tough for him to come back and play cricket,” Bilal said.

Celebrations cancelled

He added that the team were planning to celebrate Diwali by watching the Champions League match on Saturday, but all plans were cancelled. Just a day before, Parvez and his friends had rushed to get Virender Sehwag’s autograph on the eve of the match. They had even got tickets from Delhi Daredevils batsman Mithun Manhas and were eager to see Sehwag and Gambhir bat.

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