Half a Freedom

The night Mumbai bled and the wronged men who bled longer

- Pritha Vashishth, Jinit Parmar

IMAGINE stepping into a dark cave, thinking you'll be out in 15 minutes.

But when you finally emerge from the cavern, 19 years have lapsed. And that overwhelming sense of suffocation that clings to you isn’t always visible to the outside world, unlike the streaks of greyed hair that mark the passage of time.

At the time, many questioned whether torturing suspects, even using electric shocks on their private parts, could ever be justified. But once someone is accused of killing 185 people, such doubts and concerns quickly fade. “But we were still in Arthur Road Jail,” says one of the men accused in the July 11, 2006 Mumbai train bombings, now known as 7/11. Somewhere along the way, the principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty was quietly forgotten.

This is the story of those twelve men who were blamed for the deadly blasts, imprisoned, tortured and ultimately acquitted nearly two decades later.

Among them was Mohammed Sajid Margub Ansari (Sajid), listed as Accused No. 7. Sitting in his modest flat in Mira Road’s Naya Nagar, his breathing is uneven and his silent pauses are heavy. He had been released on a 40-day parole just before the Bombay High Court's verdict that cleared the accused. It was as if the last 19 years swam before his eyes all at once. He held his daughter close, but it was the memory of prison and being behind cold metal bars, that still appeared to cling tighter. “When they first brought my child to see me, she cried. She didn’t recognise me,” he whispered.

His emotionally, mentally and physically draining 19-year ordeal began with what seemed like a routine police inquiry about the 2006 Mumbai train bombings.