Ehtesham Siddiqui: “I got my freedom but there is pain”

An accused in the 2006 Mumbai train bombings reflects on his exoneration

- SHAHID TANTRAY

Ehtesham Siddiqui was among 12 men acquitted by the Bombay High Court, on 21 July this year, in the Mumbai train blasts case. He had spent nineteen years behind bars. The July 2006 bombings killed 187 people. The police charged him with planting the bombs, and he was among five people sentenced to death by the trial court in 2015. At the time of his arrest in 2006, he was 23.

Originally from a village in the Jaunpur district of Uttar Pradesh, Siddiqui had moved to Mumbai for higher education. His academic career was disrupted in 2001 by an arrest related to the Students' Islamic Movement of India, a case that later ended in acquittal. He subsequently established himself as a printer and publisher of Islamic books, starting Shahadah Publishing House in 2004. He married in 2005, only seven months before his arrest.

From inside prison, Siddiqui waged a tenacious legal battle, filing nearly six thousand right-to-information applications that eventually became the basis of his defense. These applications proved, among other things, that the police had prevented him from accessing call data records and had relied on a stock witness to implicate him. While in jail, he also wrote Horror Saga, a poetic narrative detailing the chain of events from his initial detention through the lengthy trial. Siddiqui now faces the task of rebuilding his life with his family.

Shahid Tantray, a multimedia reporter at The Caravan, spoke to Siddiqui about his nearly two-decade-long incarceration.

Where were you on 11 July 2006, the day of the blasts?

When I heard about the blast, I went downstairs to ask what had happened and got to know that a blast had taken place. I was at home after the namaz. I knew that the police would inquire about me, since my name was already registered in the 2001 SIMI case.