19 years after Mumbai train blasts, investigation leaves a long trail of injustice
Sajid Ansari, one of those arrested, and the Bhalerao family, who lost their son in the blasts, continue to feel that justice has eluded them.
In September 2006, Sajid Ansari was summoned to the police station near his home in Mumbai. “They told me it will take five minutes. But those five minutes turned out to be 19 years.”
Ansari spent 19 years in prison on charges that he had conspired with 12 others to explode seven bombs on Mumbai’s suburban trains on July 11, 2006. The blasts killed 189 people and injured 824.
Ten years ago, a court convicted Ansari and the other men, sentencing five of them to death and others to life imprisonment.
But this July, the Bombay High Court reversed the judgement, acquitting the men.
“This is the first time I have heard of a case where the accused, after being sentenced to death and life imprisonment, have been acquitted – not one, not two, all of them,” said Yashwant Bhalerao who lost his 23-year-old son Harshal in the train blasts. “This means these people had been wrongly framed.”
Back home, Ansari recounted how he was allegedly tortured by the police, and how he missed seeing his daughter grow up. Sitting next to his bereft-looking wife, Bhalerao rued: “We are saddened by the fact that neither did we get justice, and these people, if they are actually innocent, were wrongly kept in prison for 20 years.”
