THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: People’s Democratic Party (PDP) leader Abdunnasar Ma’adani has called off the ‘fast-unto-death’ agitation that he planned to launch here Friday and decided to move the Press Council of India against the media “spreading false stories”.
He was to go on an indefinite hunger strike along with his children Salahudheen Ayoobi, 11, and Omar Mukhtar, 7, before the State Secretariat demanding speedy investigation into the allegations against his family and an end to “false propaganda” by a section of media.
“I’m calling off the fast owing to the pressure from my relatives and well wishers. We would instead move the regulator against the media that are carrying all sorts of stories being planted by the police against my wife,” the cleric-turned politician told reporters in Alappuzha Thursday.
Last week, Kerala police arrested his wife Sufia on charges of hijacking and burning a Tamil Nadu government bus four years back to press for his release from jail. A court released her on conditional bail Thursday after spending a week in confinement.
“In the Paul Muthoot (murder) case, the entire media spurned the police version and prompted to correct the course of investigation. Why then is such a rush to publish all the police stories targeting my family without raising any doubts?” he said.
The PDP leader also alleged that there was an “imperialist agenda” to corner people like him who are “fighting the rightist and imperialist forces” and claimed that the role of Mossad and CIA in the “media propaganda” against him could not be ruled out.
He also visited his wife in Alappuzha Medical College Hospital where she was shifted to from jail the other day after she fell ill. She was discharged from the state-run hospital Thursday and was taken to a private hospital in Kochi for a check-up.
Ma’adani said the statement given to the media by Yousuf, a Tamil convert to Islam, about her association with the “terrorists” and implicating her in the bus burning was prompted by the police.
Yousuf had spent some seven years with him in the Coimbatore jail after convicted in a theft case when Ma’adani was kept there as an under-trial in the Coimbatore serial blasts case. After his release, he married a Malayalee girl and the couple joined the Ma’adani family as helpers.
“He has become a pawn in the hands of police to frame false charges against my family,” Ma’dani alleged. “The questions posed by the journalists and the answers they got from the man were all drafted by the police. We’ll fight it in the court”.
The PDP, which has been backing the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) since the 2006 elections, has decided to launch a fortnight-long awareness campaign throughout the state on January 1, explaining the “conspiracy” against its leader and an indefinite sit-in agitation before the Secretariat from Jan.15.
