Mehrunnissa says that before her husband disappeared, he used to regularly send money to the family, make calls and come visiting every fortnight. “But after Friday prayers one day last year, we never heard from him,” she adds.

Rehman neither called nor wrote letters, not even to his wife during the last one year, when she went to her parents’ with their three children, only to be brought back in the wake of his arrest later week.

Family members, all into sugarcane production in Lilaun, claim Rehman ran away from Meerut a year ago “out of fear” after local police interrogated him on the stay of two people at the mosque where he was serving as head cleric. “He speaks less and doesn’t like to get involved in controversies. After the police began interrogations, he went traceless. He must have done it out of fear. We didn’t hear from him for the next 8-9 months in any way. We did not know his whereabouts,” says cousin Mohammad Younus, adding he might have been in Delhi. “All the while he was away, police came visiting us to interrogate on his whereabouts but we were clueless.”

People at the two mosques — Takiyawali Masjid and Masjid Bhatiyaran in Shyamali in Muzaffarnagar — who remember Iqbal as a “gentle and calm” cleric are equally clueless. “While he was at the mosque, he never was engaged in any controversies. He spent most of his time in the mosque and mostly kept to himself. He was quite shy natured,” says Raees Ahmad Siddiqui, manager of Takiyawali Masjid in Shyamali in Muzaffarnagar where Rehman served as head cleric from 2001 to 2002 says.

... contd.