Mumbai: Abdul Wahid Din Mohammad Shaikh spent nine years in Mumbai’s Arthur road jail for the 2006 Mumbai train blasts, confined either to its 2ftx6ft anda cell or the 6ftx8ft area outside his barracks before he was acquitted seven years ago. To this day, he finds himself walking from wall to wall in his small room at home out of habit, until his wife reminds him that he is free, that he can step outside into the sunlight.
“You could only walk straight in that space (in jail)—forward and back, forward and back, like a train. There was no space to even turn around…So I am used to a closed room now. Even when I can go out, I don’t,” he says.
Of the 13 men accused in the 2006 blasts that killed 189 people, Shaikh was the only one acquitted in September 2015. He had been charged with harbouring some of the accused after they planted the bomb but was granted the benefit of doubt as the court felt that the allegations against him had not been proven.
However, a lot has happened in the seven years since then. Asif Khan, who was called one of the “key conspirators” of the blasts, by Mumbai ATS, has been acquitted in the two previous but unrelated cases that were pending against him.
It was primarily on the basis of these two past criminal cases that the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act 1999 (MCOCA) was invoked in the 7/11 blasts case against all the people charged. The invocation of this 1999 law caused a ripple effect that allowed the court to accept alleged confessions the accused made to the police, which were used to finally convict them.
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With the two past cases no longer in the picture, the families of these convicts are filled with renewed optimism, but celebrations are premature. The law may not work in their favour. An acquittal in previous cases will have no bearing on their appeal against the 7/11 judgment. This, despite the fact that MCOCA was only possible because of those pending cases. A lawyer connected with the appeals said MCOCA only requires pending cases against the accused when the original case is being heard. A not-guilty verdict in a pending case has no bearing on the current appeals, he says. The irony is not lost on the convicts, their families or their lawyers. “When the investigating officers file a chargesheet, all they have to see is that there are two pending cases against the accused. That’s all that’s required,” says one of the lawyers connected with the appeals.
Meanwhile, appeals filed against the judgment remain stuck in the Bombay High Court, which also needs to confirm the death penalties awarded by the trial court.
Buried deep inside 44,000 pages of court records—some readable and some completely illegible—and flitting between ‘overburdened’ judges, the case doesn’t seem to be nearing a conclusion. The result is an endless wait—for the victims of the blast looking for someone to hold guilty, and for the families of the convicts, who are hoping for a fate similar to Wahid for their own sons.
