Why country's most dreaded 'terrorist' fears he'll be killed in a fake encounter

The moment I had tweeted about my meeting with Yasin Bhatkal's lawyer Shaik Saifullah and his expressing his client's fear that he will be bumped off, came the first love tweet. "Shouldn't media bat for awarding Paramvir Chakra to Bhatkal?" The sarcastic message was men like Yasin Bhatkal did not deserve a voice, a counsel or even a tweet.

Other tweets that followed were more harsh. Like this one. "Yeh kutton ko bhi darr lagta hai marne ka? To marne do saalon ko."

Saifullah, who is representing the 32-year-old Bhatkal in the Dilsukhnagar blast case of February 2013 in Hyderabad, is aware of the sentiment on the street. But perhaps like all defence counsel, he also believes that the NIA case against his client is flimsy. "The NIA chargesheet itself admits Bhatkal was not in India at the time of the Hyderabad blast. He is accused number five who is charged with conspiring and praying for the success of the terror attack. Now how will the NIA prove that he was indeed praying," he says.

Yasin has been lodged inside a high security cell at Hyderabad's Cherlapalli prison since November 2014. He won't get to leave the city till judgement is delivered in the Dilsukhnagar case, which with 500 witnesses, is unlikely to get over in a jiffy.

But the man, who Indian security agencies call the country's most dreaded terrorist, fears he may not survive that long. He suspects a plan has been hatched to finish him off and the leak of his alleged plans to escape with help from Damascus was like testing the waters. His lawyer says Yasin denied ever talking about Damascus to his wife and has now asked the court to install CCTV cameras around his cell and put him under surveillance, 24x7. "Otherwise, they will leak a story of how he was trying to escape and had to be shot dead," he reasons. Yasin believes the Damascus story is the first step of a game which has been set up to kill him in a fake encounter.

During the one-week of police custody a couple of months ago, Saifullah says Yasin came back a shaken man. Yasin Bhatkal alleges the NIA investigators told him that if he dreams of fighting the case to get acquittal, he too could meet Waqar's fate. Waqar, an alleged terror operative and four other undertrials were shot dead by policemen on April 7, while being taken from Warangal prison to a Hyderabad court. The cops claimed the handcuffed prisoners were planning to escape. But Bhatkal never complained to court, arguing no one would believe his version.

Three months back, Yasin had requested the court for "access to sunlight, fresh air and water" in his special cell, arguing he is suffering from many ailments including skin and gastric problems. A request his lawyer says has not been met with yet.

Yasin Bhatkal, whose original name is Ahmed Siddibapa, can only look back on his days in the scenic port town of Bhatkal, his home in coastal Karnataka, where sunlight, fresh air and water are never in short supply. But then only he has to be blamed for choosing to walk on the road less travelled.