The responsibility of protecting the religious properties of Muslims in the state lies with the Andhra Pradesh State Wakf Board. It is, for all intents and purposes, the guardian of religious properties entrusted to its safekeeping by generations of devout Muslims.
As guardian of these properties, the onus of protecting them from encroachments, lie with its employees.
However, the fact of the matter is that apart from a few employees of the Wakf Board, a majority have not carried out their duties. On the contrary, many of the employees have been accused of working against the very principle on which the Wakf Board was constituted.
If the Wakf Board employees are not busy in indulging in widespread corruption, including the selling off of lands under their protection, as suspected by various sections of Muslims, then they are busy playing games of one-upmanship against each other.
These days, the Wakf Board is in the limelight after its Chief Executive Officer B S Farooq Ahmed was
nabbed red-handed for accepting a bribe.
2 days after the shocking incident, an FIR was registered against Farooq and 6 others, on the direction of a court, for harassing an Accounts Officer at the Wakf Board, P Khaja Shafi.
According to the FIR, Farooq had barged inside his home on a Sunday at around 11pm on 25 April 2010, and made him sign a voluntary retirement form.
It is very curious indeed what made the CEO barge into the house of his junior at that unearthly time, that too on a Sunday. Another question that is being raised is what sense of duty did the CEO possess that empowered him to make Khaja Shafi, who himself is facing allegations of impropriety, sign his retirement papers.
Another question to be answered by the CEO is whether it was his sense of responsibility or some external pressure that had forced him to act the way he did on that fateful Sunday night.
Another surprising aspect of Farooq's action is that he is the Chief Executive Officer of a Board, which has active members with powers of their own. Then how could Farooq bypass these members and personally carry out action against Khaja Shafi? And how could these board members maintain silence over the CEO's action?
If Farooq had acted on his own, the Wakf Board members stand guilty of keeping silent, and if they were aware of what was going on beforehand, they stand guilty of complicity.
Also, the Wakf Board has passed orders for Khaja Shafi's retirement, but no probe, internal or external, was conducted against the allegations raised against him by the board.
The silence by the Wakf Board members in this entire sordid episode is a bit too deafening to ignore.
It is time that the public stands up and questions the goings-on in the Wakf Board, the guardian of its religious properties.
Courtesy: INN News