NEW DELHI, MARCH 3: The All India Milli Council (AIMC) has appealed to the UPA leadership, the Prime Minister and the Union Home Minister to restrain police and intelligence agencies from going public with unsubstantiated claims about the involvement of Muslims in each and every act of terror.

The AIMC Secretary General Dr Mohammad Manzoor Alam said here today in a press release that every time a bomb goes off somewhere the police and intelligence agencies reflexively declare the involvement of some "Muslim" organisation or persons even before an enquiry begins.

This has been going on for years even though such claims have turned out to be false in several cases. "To cite just a few cases: In Chhattisingpura Muslims were blamed for the killing of Sikhs, but it turned out that a section of the security forces had done the heinous deed," Dr Alam said.

A few days later the security forces killed half a dozen Muslim young men claiming they were responsible for the massacre of the Sikhs. But, it turned out that those people had nothing to do with the massacre of Sikhs. "That did not prevent the then Union Home Minister, Mr LK Advani, from publicly praising the 'gallantry' of these murderers," Dr Alam said.

The same happened in Ghatkopar in Mumbai where some youth belonging to anti-Muslim organisations were caught making bombs to attack Muslim places of worship. Their activities were detected only after the death of a bomb maker who died when one of his bombs exploded accidentally. "Muslim dresses" and false beards were seized from the premises, and the culprits told the police they intended to attack Muslim places of worship wearing those clothes and false beards.

"After that so many Muslim places of worship have been bombed - from the historic Jama Masjid in Delhi to equally important Makkah Masjid in Hyderabad. Invariably, in all of them Muslim organisations have been blamed by the police," Dr Alam said.

The same pattern has been repeated whether it is the Ajmer Dargah of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti or Malegaon Jama Masjid. "As a consequence of following false leads investigating agencies have not been able to make any headway in any of the cases," he added. Also, it is difficult to understand why a Muslim organisation should bomb a mosque, he remarked.

He, however, expressed satisfaction over the arrest of seven Hindu Munani (an affiliate of the RSS) workers in Tenkasi town of Tamil Nadu for bombing their own office. The accused told the police that they had planted the bombs in their own office to polarise Hindu opinion in their favour.

Dr Alam said that in the light of the Tenkasi, Ghatkopar and Chhattisingpura cases the Union government should ask the states to review their line of investigation in cases involving blasts in Muslim places of worship and consider the possibility of Hindutva zealots' involvement in them. Dr Alam also suggested that the possible role of foreign intelligence agencies like ISI, CIA and Mossad should be included in the enquiries.