Think about you’re harmless of any crime. However a day arrives when the police arrest you. They topic you to nightmarish torture. Then they cost you with heinous crimes of terror and treason.

Think about after this you’re locked behind jail partitions for perhaps 9, perhaps 14, perhaps 19 years.

Think about you’re sentenced to dying and wait interminable years for the morning you can be marched to the gallows.

Think about then in the future {that a} larger courtroom guidelines that you’re solely harmless.

You end up free.

You stroll by way of the jail gates into an completely unfamiliar world. A world that has handed you by. A world hostile or detached to the monumental injustice you’ve gotten endured.

You step into a house the place your family members have died, or wracked by your struggling aged past recognition. You see your kids whose total childhood you missed.

You perceive that you simply suffered this fashion solely due to the faith into which you have been born.

Sadly, this has change into the story of too many lives in a republic that claims to be a secular democracy dominated by justice and the legislation.

The final decade of the twentieth century and the primary of the twenty first century noticed a collection of terror assaults and bomb explosions in several corners of the nation. After every of those, with few exceptions, Muslim males have been charged with these monstrous crimes and jailed for years. Their households lived in penury and shame. After which, one after the other, these instances started crumbling. Courts declared the accused males harmless and so they walked free after unjust incarceration of a few years. The thriller of who truly deliberate and executed the fear killings remained unsolved.

The most recent on this collection of acquittals is of 12 males charged with engineering the lethal blasts that had ripped by way of crowded compartments at peak hour in seven native trains in Mumbai in July 2006. 9 years later, a particular courtroom sentenced 5 males to dying, seven to life imprisonment and acquitted one individual. A decade later, in July 2025 the Bombay Excessive Court docket put aside this verdict, cleared all of the accused individuals, together with these on dying row of guilt, made scathing observations on the standard of the investigation and prosecution, and expressed horror on the accounts of torture which, it described if true as “inhuman, barbaric” sufficient to “shock the conscience of anybody”. They walked free after residing 19 years in jail.

I converse of those males who stroll free after lengthy years embroiled in costs of terror crimes as “terror innocents”. The Mumbai prepare blast case tragically, as I stated, is on no account an outlier.

Take just some examples. In no case that I recount right here has any police officer been held to account for torture and fabricating false proof. No “terror harmless” has been awarded any reparation, and even financial compensation for his or her lives misplaced in jail and the struggling of their households.

Mohammad Amir Khan, a resident of Outdated Delhi was arrested in 1998 on the age of 18 and falsely implicated in 19 bomb blast instances throughout Delhi and neighbouring states corresponding to Uttar Pradesh and Haryana. He was freed 14 years later, the courtroom citing fabricated proof, coerced confessions, and lack of fabric proof.

One-hundred-and twenty-seven Muslim males have been arrested by the Gujarat police at a Surat seminar on Muslim schooling, accused of belonging to the banned College students Islamic Motion of India below the Illegal Actions (Prevention) Act. After a 20-year ordeal, all surviving 122 accused have been acquitted by a Surat courtroom in March 2021. The courtroom dominated the prosecution “failed to provide cogent, dependable and passable proof” and highlighted their “misplaced years”, however no compensation was reported.

In Could 1994, 11 Muslim males from Jalgaon district have been arrested by the police who claimed they plotted bombings to avenge the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The lads spent 4 months in jail earlier than bail, then one other 25 years below trial. On 27 February 27, 2019, a Nashik courtroom below the Terrorist and Disruptive Actions (Prevention) Act acquitted all 11, with the declaration “This courtroom finds you harmless”.

In February 2008, a terror assault on a camp of the Central Reserve Police Forces camp in Rampur, Uttar Pradesh, killed seven jawans. Two Muslims have been arrested on costs of storing weapons used within the assault. They have been convicted throughout a trial and imprisoned for about 11 years. On November 3, 2019, an area courtroom acquitted each males for “need of proof”.

In December 1993, bombs on 5 Bangalore-bound trains killed two and injured eight. Three Muslim youth from Gulbarga have been convicted for the blasts (based mostly on confessions) and jailed. They spent 23 years in jail. In June 2016, the Supreme Court docket overturned their convictions, as a result of the one proof was a compelled confession with out corroboration.

On February 1, 2002, six bombs hidden in tiffin containers exploded on Ahmedabad metropolis buses. In 2003-’04, the police charged two Muslim males with the assaults. They spent 13 years in jail till, in 2017, the Supreme Court docket acquitted each as harmless. The Supreme Court docket famous lack of proof and “dropped” all costs, declaring the lads harmless.

On September 13, 2005, seven bombs in Delhi killed 67 folks. Police charged two Muslim males, a scarf weaver from Kashmir and a pupil, with planting bombs. They spent almost 12 years in Tihar jail till a Delhi courtroom acquitted each, dropping all costs as a result of it discovered no proof they’d any function.

In 2002, two co-located Akshardham temples in Gujarat have been bombed, killing 33. The police arrested a madrasa instructor and social employee in Ahmedabad, and 6 others and blamed them based mostly on confessions made throughout police custody. The lads spent 11 years in jail – usually in solitary confinement. On Could 16, 2014, the Supreme Court docket acquitted all six, holding that the investigating company had indulged in a “severe try … to manufacture a case… and body them”.

In September 2006, two bombs exploded in Malegaon, killing 37. Initially, the police blamed Islamic teams, arresting 9 Muslims. They spent 10 years in jail combating costs below the Illegal Actions Prevention Act. In November 2016, a particular courtroom in Malegaon acquitted all 9, citing lack of proof.

In 2007, the Uttar Pradesh police charged 5 Muslim youth from Moradabad with ties to the banned Harkat-ul-Jihad-e-Islami, alleging they participated in Pakistani coaching camps. They have been jailed for 9 years earlier than a courtroom in Uttar Pradesh 2015 and 2016 acquitted all 5.

On Could 18, 2007, bomb explosions through the Friday prayers at Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad killed 9 folks. Police initially arrested 4 Muslims who spent 7 years in Telangana’s Chanchalguda jail. In Feb 2014 the Hyderabad classes courtroom acquitted all 4, discovering “no proof” to convict. After the Mecca Masjid blasts, police arrested eight extra males, alleging they conspired to kill officers in retaliation. 5 have been killed in “encounters”. The others have been acquitted of all costs in 2017.

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I might go on. Confronted with proof of this numbing array of recurrent state cruelty, prejudice and injustice, I sat with two males who had spent lengthy years in jail, charged with terror crimes after which let out. I discovered from them just a little of how lives are crushed and diminished, how lives are misplaced to faux terror costs and protracted jail sentences

The primary of those is Mohd Aamir Khan. Raised within the slim by-lanes of the medieval Outdated Delhi, he was charged when he was simply 18 with being the master-mind of a collection of bomb blasts that traumatised the Nationwide Capital Area in 1996.

After his launch in 2012, he was first taken below the wings of ANHAD led by Shabnam Hashmi, a number one societal formation for advancing communal concord and minority rights. He then joined me as a valued senior colleague in Aman Biradari and the Karwan e Mohabbat, a folks’s marketing campaign for combating hate with solidarity, justice and radical love.

The second is Abdul Wahid Shaikh, a faculty instructor in Mumbai who was among the many 13 males charged with engineering the bomb explosions on trains in Mumbai in 2007. He was acquitted after 9 years in jail. Since then, he has constructed a exceptional profession as a human rights activist, author, speaker and scholar. His e-book Begunah Qaidi (Harmless Prisoners) information his experiences in jail. He additionally accomplished his PhD on jail writings.

Under are extracts from what I discovered from them.

Mohd Aamir Khan

I used to be 18 once I was kidnapped. I don’t name it an arrest. Males in plain garments caught me in a darkish lonely nook once I was strolling after dinner to a drugs store. They threw me right into a Gypsy, blind-folded me, tied my palms behind my again, and held me for seven days and nights in a constructing that was not a police station. An arrest is one thing that’s finished to you in accordance with the structure, the legislation, by a process prescribed within the CrPC [The Code of Criminal Procedure]. I used to be not arrested, I used to be kidnapped.

I believed they have been criminals. I couldn’t think about they have been policemen. Nobody in my household till then had seen the within of a courtroom, not to mention a police station. I used to be born in Outdated Delhi and knew little of the world exterior this. I used to be a young person and believed that the police existed to guard us. I requested the lads why they’d kidnapped me. One growled threateningly with a swear phrase.

Through the 30-minute journey, I saved questioning why I had been kidnapped. I had seen in Hindi movies that folks have been kidnapped both due to household enmity, or for ransom from very wealthy folks. I used to be puzzled as a result of we had no such enemies, and I used to be raised in a lower-middle-class household.

The Gypsy reached a constructing the place I used to be dragged right into a room. The lads pulled off my blindfold but additionally all my garments. I attempted to cover my personal components. However certainly one of them laughed – why are you ashamed, that is our on a regular basis work.

For seven days and nights I used to be subjected to third-degree torture. The ache was excruciating, I used to be screaming, crying. However the males have been informal and unaffected by my yelling and pleading, as if this was their routine work. Additionally they tortured me with no worry, no sense that they are going to be held accountable for this.

The torture haunts me even at the moment. They tore off my nails and injected petrol into my anus. They gave me electrical shocks on my nipples and personal components. They might make me drink quite a lot of water: I’d then be made to urinate in a bathtub during which the electrical wires have been immersed, so I’d endure shocks in my genitals. They might press my toes and my again with picket logs. These have been all assaults that didn’t go away seen indicators of harm on one’s physique.

As the times of torture continued, I started to grasp slowly that these should be policemen, as a result of handcuffs and wi-fi units appeared. When a senior got here in, they’d salute in the way in which policemen salute.

They compelled me to signal clean confession papers and took me to the Justice of the Peace’s courtroom. I didn’t know the place they have been taking me, however they warned me that I need to stay silent: “Do not forget that ultimately you’ll come again to us”.

After I entered the courtroom, I understood it was a courtroom as a result of I had seen courtrooms in movies. I had no lawyer. The choose, the prosecutor, the policemen all spoke in English. I didn’t perceive a phrase. I saved silent as a result of the police had warned me. I used to be to be taught later that the crime I used to be charged for was a collection of bomb blasts within the NCR area that occurred two years earlier, in 1996.

After this I used to be positioned in authorized custody. I used to be taken each 24 hours to be examined by the physician. However the policeman would inform the physician, “Keep in mind the bomb blasts whenever you needed to extract the pellets from the our bodies of the victims”. Then he would level to me, in handcuffs, and say, “He’s the one that exploded that bomb”. One physician replied, “I don’t see any accidents on his physique. You aren’t doing sufficient. Do your job nicely. I’m right here. Don’t fear. I’ll signal the papers that there was no torture”.

That is how they’d converse to the docs, the nurses, the media, even to the courts. The consequence was the whole choking of any human sympathy and compassion that they may have had. Go away apart compassion, they turned unwilling to defend even the rights that the legislation had given me. That is how they’d poison folks in all of the establishments that have been there to guard us.

However there have been additionally good examples. I keep in mind being taken in handcuffs to a lady physician. She requested me if I had any accidents. I used to be only a baby, and really frightened, so I saved silent. She stated to the policeman, “Unlock his handcuffs and go away the room. I need to study him rigorously”. The policeman tried to dissuade her, saying I used to be a harmful terrorist. However she was agency. “I do know what my duties are,” she stated severely to the policeman.

The affect of this torture on my thoughts and my physique haven’t gone away, though 27 years have handed since that point. Within the winter chilly or monsoons, my limbs ache. A lot worse are the psychological well being penalties. My thoughts shouldn’t be but absolutely healed. After my launch in 2012, I used to be handled by the psychiatrist Dr Achal Bhagat, and this helped me. However many occasions I nonetheless get up whereas sleeping, screaming or begging for mercy. The nightmares don’t go away me. Typically, I can’t sleep by way of the night time. It’s as if these days of torture and people 14 years in jail won’t ever go away me. They are going to observe me by way of my life like a shadow.

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In jail I discovered that I used to be not the one one who suffered third-degree torture by the hands of the police. Many jail inmates informed me comparable tales. I usually marvel what sort of coaching is given to those public officers. How do they crush inside themselves essentially the most elementary human compassion? There is no such thing as a humanity of their faces, of their eyes. The faces of the lads who tortured me I nonetheless keep in mind all these years later. If you’re in unlawful custody, even in the event you die, the police don’t care. They are going to simply put your physique right into a bag and dispose it off. I felt safer with authorized custody.

Jail is one other world, hidden behind tall, thick partitions and iron bars. This can be a deaf and mute world. I say this as a result of the voices, the cries from the world inside by no means attain the surface world. And if the voices attain, nobody exterior pays any heed. They consider jail as a sort of taboo. If unhealthy issues occur inside to the prisoners, that’s positive, that’s accurately. There was a lot much less work on prisoners’ rights in India than what I hear about nations in Europe.

There’s a Russian author, I don’t keep in mind his title, however he stated that in the event you want to perceive a society, take a look at the preparations of its jails. Why are our jails stuffed with people who find themselves poor and uneducated, of Dalits and Adivasis?

I discovered in jail that prisoners have a variety of skills and capabilities. The difficulty is that they’d used these within the flawed method. But when handled nicely, these skills can be utilized for the great of society. Jails have held Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi and Nehru and Jai Prakash Narayan. There are harmless folks in prisons, and each individual in jail is a human being who can contribute to creating a greater world after his launch.

I used to be raised in Outdated Delhi. In my childhood, I had Hindu and Sikh buddies. However as I grew to maturity, they moved out from our neighbourhood, I don’t know the place. This occurred from round 1989, when Advani ji had set out on his Rath Yatra and society started to tear aside. At present in Outdated Delhi, Hindus and Muslims dwell in separate neighbourhoods. As I grew right into a younger man, I used to be disadvantaged of the fantastic thing about this nation during which folks of each faith, caste, language, area dwell facet by facet.

The most effective factor about jail was that right here I discovered this India, during which there have been Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and atheists, folks talking numerous languages, folks of numerous castes. We might all eat collectively, spend time collectively. I discovered about different communities, their methods of life, their issues.

In jail I skilled ache but additionally humanity. Within the yr 2000, I used to be thrown by the jailor into solidarity confinement for 5 months. On the gate of my cell, they draped a blanket in order that even the sunshine of the solar wouldn’t penetrate. The jailor had strictly warned different jail inmates that if anybody talked to me or shared something from the jail canteen, they’d be severely punished. Ramzan got here, and I began my roza fasts.

Two fellow prisoners, one Sikh referred to as Baljit and a Hindu referred to as Karan would come each morning at 6 am to my cell, their faces wrapped in mufflers so nobody might recognise them. They might throw into my cell every day a packet of dates and a packet of milk for my quick, after which would run away. They by no means spoke a phrase to me. They weren’t even of my religion, they didn’t know me personally, however they’d a lot respect for my spiritual beliefs that they bravely took the danger of punishment in order that I might preserve my quick. I discovered quite a bit from them, about humanity and braveness.

In some methods the struggling of the household of the accused individual is even better than that of the individual in jail. In jail he would possibly come to phrases one way or the other together with his state of affairs. A minimum of he will get his meals on time, he has a routine. However the household that’s exterior, their struggling is relentless. Society, the police, the media deal with them as pariahs. If you find yourself in jail, your loved ones has to earn a residing. Many individuals are unwilling to make use of you. On courtroom days, they need to miss the day’s wages.

Earlier than I used to be charged with these crimes, my father was given quite a lot of respect locally. However now folks would shrink away from him. This triggered him quite a lot of struggling. When he went to courtroom, folks would taunt him as the daddy of a terrorist. He was unable to concentrate to his small enterprise, and courtroom bills and legal professionals’ charges ate away all our financial savings. My mom’s jewelry was bought, and little by little the little property that we owned.

Two years after my arrest, my father died. In jail I had no concept of this. It was within the subsequent courtroom listening to that the lawyer knowledgeable me that my father had died. The choose condoled with me. I can’t keep in mind something of what transpired after that within the courtroom. I turned fully numb as I stood there handcuffed. I used to be helpless and dazed. After the listening to, I walked again by way of the jail gates into my barrack and lay down. I felt a zinda laash, a residing corpse.

Years later, after my launch, I am going typically to the graveyard. However I don’t even know which spot my father lay buried. I simply stand in a nook and pray in his reminiscence.

After his dying, my mom needed to step out of the house to battle my authorized case. She was unlettered, had at all times lived in purdah in her dwelling. However for the subsequent 10 years, she alone fought my authorized instances in courtroom. In 2010, she suffered a mind haemorrhage that left her paralysed. After my launch in 2012, I discovered her on this state, a zinda laash.

After I stepped out of the gates of the jail in 2012, not simply 14 years had handed, the century had modified over. For a prisoner who spends a few years in jail, his chronological age will increase however he stays caught at that time of time when he was introduced into jail. When he lastly steps out of jail, he tries to select up from the place he left off when he was jailed. However that’s inconceivable. I went into jail when my mother and father have been alive and wholesome, they have been revered locally, and we had an honest dwelling. None of this was there once I was launched. I needed to begin life once more from minus zero. Additionally, expertise. After I was kidnapped in 1998, there have been no cellphones, no metro, no PVR Cinemas, no plastic cash (ATM and bank cards), no electronic mail, no buying malls. It took me a very long time to be taught all of this. I’m nonetheless studying.

When folks hear of somebody being launched from jail, they suppose that his issues will now be sorted out. After all, freedom is a superb blessing. However so many challenges stay. How will society deal with him? Will he get the identical respect and place in his neighborhood that he loved earlier than he was jailed? Will he get a job, and if that’s the case what sort of job? Will the police proceed to harass him? Will he nonetheless be taunted as a terrorist?

Apart from, an individual spends these lengthy years in jail when he might have educated himself, discovered a talent, began a enterprise, taken a job. Disadvantaged of all of this, it is extremely exhausting for him to restart life with out the strong help of the state. For the reason that state did none of this for me, I used to be saved as a result of senior leaders of Delhi civil society did for me what the state ought to have finished.

The state has a coverage of rehabilitating surrendered militants. These are individuals who admit that they engaged in terror assaults, and now are turning their backs on this life. I help this coverage. However how about individuals who haven’t dedicated any terror crime, but endure torture, the struggling of jail sentences, their households destroyed exterior? Why is there no coverage to rehabilitate these individuals?

It is necessary for us to have this dialog. Individuals principally have no idea; they don’t care about our predicament. The media creates a sensation once we are arrested and charged with terror crimes. The protection once we are proved harmless is a lot smaller. Individuals suppose it is a small matter and let it go from their conscience and consciousness. However spending 14 or 19 years in jail if you end up harmless shouldn’t be a small matter. It ought to stir the conscience of the nation.

Abdul Wahid Shaikh

I used to be not arrested instantly after the Mumbai prepare bomb blasts on July 11, 2006. These terror blasts have been horrifying. Within the crowded compartments of seven totally different native trains at peak hour, inside the house of seven minutes, bombs exploded. Greater than 200 folks have been killed and over 700 injured.

It’s for this crime of the prepare terror explosions that 13 of us have been accused, tortured and jailed. Considered one of us died in jail, I used to be launched after 9 years, the opposite 12 at the moment are acquitted in 2025. After 19 years they walked out of jail. 5 have been on dying row for ten years. Now, the Bombay Excessive Court docket has dominated that we’re all harmless.

My formal arrest was not instantly after the prepare blasts. This occurred solely three months later, in September. There was an outdated case of SIMI terror filed in opposition to me from 2001, which was proved to be false and I used to be acquitted. The police used this, and instances like this, to cost all 13 of us.

Why have been we charged with this terror crime? We have been all Muslim, we have been all Indians, all of us have been males who had religion within the Structure. Earlier than being charged with the Bombay terror blasts, we have been all incomes our livelihoods in several methods. I used to be a instructor, one other labored in a hospital, one ran a meals and vegetable enterprise, one ran a cellular restore store. (This man, who repaired mobiles, at the moment 19 years later, doesn’t know tips on how to function an Android cell phone. He asks me, how do I ship a WhatsApp message or an electronic mail message). We have been principally have been married with kids.

For 3 months earlier than our formal arrest, the police would summon us, and illegally detain us typically for days at a stretch. They might thrash us every time. The police warned us and our households: don’t complain to the media or to the courts. Avoid everybody. Should you break these guidelines, we’ll cost you for this prepare blast terror crime. Due to these threats, we remained silent and our households too have been silent. We saved our hearts giant and resolved to cooperate with the investigation. We accepted and endured our unlawful detentions and thrashing by the police. When the police would be taught the reality, they’d set us free and our struggling would finish. We nonetheless had religion.

However this didn’t occur. Regardless that the police after investigating knew we have been harmless, after they couldn’t discover the actual criminals, they charged us with the fear crimes. The reality is that the police failed to seek out the actual criminals. Not then and never now, all these 19 years later. So, they thought – allow us to body these males for the crime. They’ve outdated terror crimes within the SIMI case behind them (though they’d been discovered harmless). They’re training Muslims. They put on beards and cranium caps. We are going to current them as the lads responsible of the horrific bomb blasts on the prepare. The media will likely be completely satisfied, the households of these killed within the blasts will likely be happy, the general public will likely be appeased. They introduced that we’re related to the Lashkar-e- Taiba, the ISI, Al Qaeda. They might hold holding up the Al Qaeda guide, saying that on this the responsible are taught to falsely allege that the police have tortured them.

Our torture was in two phases. The primary section was throughout our unlawful detention. I informed you that this went on intermittently over three months, primarily beatings. Then started our authorized police detention. The police cleverly first registered seven totally different FIRs for every of the bomb blasts in seven trains. The Justice of the Peace was informed that there was no bigger conspiracy, as if totally different teams independently organised every of the seven blasts in seven trains. So, for every of the FIRs, they’d search 15 days’ police custody. When 15 days have been over, they’d once more search police custody for the subsequent FIR. This went on for seven FIRs.

When all seven have been over, the police claimed now that they’d found a single bigger terror conspiracy linking all seven prepare blasts. The case was now introduced below the draconian Maharashtra Management of Organised Crimes Act, and the Justice of the Peace now granted one other 30 days’ police remand. On this method we underwent 80 to 90 days of police remand.

I usually suppose that the police should be having a special guide on tips on how to torture. They act with a lot cruelty, they present no mercy. There may be this medicinal oil for aches and pains referred to as Surya Prakash. They inject this into our anus. The results of that is {that a} horrible burning sensation spreads to your entire physique. You begin leaping in ache. The police encourage you to go to the bathroom. However whenever you wash your self with water, the ache grows much more unbearably. They offer electrical shocks in your personal components and nipples. They half your legs at 180 levels, so that you begin bleeding out of your penis.

Additionally they resort to water-boarding. For this, they hold you the other way up, cowl your face with a material after which thrust water into your nostrils. You gag and really feel that you’re drowning. You are feeling so determined, you plead with the police – give me any paper to signal, I’ll signal it, however let me go.

The room is saved darkish. Typically you’re blind-folded, typically not. Typically the temperature is drastically decreased. Within the ice-cold room, you’re bare, so you retain shivering. The torture room is sound-proof. The Anti-Terro Squad workplace is positioned in the course of a crowded habitation, however nevertheless loudly you scream, nobody can hear you exterior.

This was not all. They make us watch the torture of our companions. Should you shut your eyes or flip your face away, they beat you and drive you to observe. This is able to start to interrupt our spirit.

Much more damaging was what they did to members of our households. For instance, there are two brothers in our group of accused males. The police introduced their father, stripped him bare and made him parade earlier than the brothers. After which they stripped the brothers, and compelled their father to observe them stroll bare. If any of them tried to cowl their personal components, they’d beat them with their batons. Faisal couldn’t bear to see this humiliation of his father. He begged the police, give me any paper to signal and I’ll signal it. If you would like me to admit to the 9/11 assault in America, I’m keen even to do that. My solely plea is, let my father put on his garments once more.

Then they referred to as their bhabhi, and tore off her veil. They might name the moms, wives and sisters of the accused males, and threaten to rape them.

A person can deal with quite a lot of torture when he’s the goal. However he breaks down when his household is humiliated in entrance of him.

The police would inform us that if you wish to be free of this torture, you’ll have to signal the papers we provide you with. With out even studying the papers, you will need to signal.

The legislation is meant to guard you as a result of the DK Basu judgment required the police to current us to a physician for medical examination each 48 hours. This they complied with, on paper. We have been taken to numerous hospitals. However every time, the medical report would at all times be fully faux. The Bombay Excessive Court docket stated exactly this after they dismissed the case.

Somebody stated to me the opposite day, torture is important in police investigations, as a result of with out torture the accused is not going to settle for their crimes. My reply to him was this: okay, if that’s the case, go a provision in legislation that in prison investigations torture is a should. Take this invoice to Parliament, admit that police use torture for prison investigation, and justify this in Parliament. However as an alternative, proper as much as at the moment, the police deny that they’ve tortured any of us.

The torture for 80 or 90 days of police custody that we endured was so agonising, that once we lastly have been despatched to jail, we felt nice aid. Ek sukoon sa laga. These days of torture will stick with us for the remainder of our lives. Our limbs nonetheless ache in winter. My eyesight is dimming. Even in deep sleep, I get nightmares of the torture. If somebody knocks on our door after midnight, my spouse and kids at all times panic that the police have come to select me up.

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For us, probably the most painful issues in jail was the dying of our family members whereas we have been in jail. My father handed away a yr after I used to be jailed. I had no concept that my father had gone. We’re not some well-known personalities that this information can be carried in newspapers. It was left to the family members to share this information with me. My mom, my spouse and my sister got here for the mulaqat (these days there was no system of cellphone calls). They agonised how they need to break this information to me, as a result of I used to be already in a lot misery.

So, what occurs? After they come for the mulaqat, they keep silent, they give the impression of being left and proper, after which they start to weep. I realise that one thing is very flawed however don’t know what that is. I urge them to inform me. The mulaqat is just for 20 minutes. The minutes go shortly. Lastly, when there is only one minute left for the mulaqat to finish, they are saying, “Don’t fear, don’t really feel any stress. However Abbu is now not with us”.

My grief and loss are better than I can bear as a result of I couldn’t be with our father when he was dying, I couldn’t organise his medical care, I couldn’t be at hand to consolation my mom and sisters.

Not simply me. Everybody among the many 13 of us misplaced their family members whereas we have been in jail. Somebody misplaced his father, somebody his mom, somebody each mother and father, somebody a spouse, somebody a brother, and so forth. Every of us confronted this identical sorrow. A jailer stated to us, “We too lose our family members simply as you do. The distinction is that we’re there by their bedside after they go away this world. However you’re far-off”. That is our harshest punishment.

These of us who have been charged with crimes of treason in opposition to the nation and terror killings confronted hostility and discrimination from the jail employees and a piece of the prisoners, as if we weren’t even human beings from this planet. However alternatively, at the least we have been housed someplace, had meals, a mattress to sleep in, a routine. We might attempt to come to phrases with our state of affairs; we reasoned with ourselves that we suffered as a result of we have been charged with such grave crimes. Nevertheless, our households weren’t even charged with any crime, besides that they have been linked to us.

I believe the punishment that our households endured was a lot harsher than ours. We have been in jail certain by a routine, waking up at a selected hour, consuming at a selected hour, and so forth, behind the excessive partitions of the jail. However they needed to face alone the hostile world exterior: kinfolk, the media, police. They usually wanted to outlive by way of all of this. Their one incomes member is in jail. The youngsters’s faculty charges need to be paid. Sisters need to be married off. Mother and father want medicines. So many calls for. Many kids drop out of college. Mother and father can’t afford the drugs they wanted to remain alive. Family break their bonds, buddies flip away. Our kinfolk distance themselves from us, not as a result of they suppose we’re responsible of terror crimes, however as a result of they worry that the wrath of the ATS that had made us terror accused, that wrath shouldn’t be directed towards them.

My spouse was in purdah, however with me in jail, she needed to step out of her dwelling and earn an revenue. Her two kids drank milk from her breasts, however since she needed to work exterior, they have been switched to bottles. These many small issues our households endured, however none of this will likely be thought-about worthy of being written down in any e-book.

Consider the spouse who waits 19 years for the return of her husband. She doesn’t divorce him and remarry. She holds on desperately to the hope that he’ll in the future be launched, as a result of she is aware of he’s harmless. Consider the daughter who was born after her father went to jail. She by no means noticed her father’s face, and he by no means noticed her face. In regular occasions, she might have studied and change into a physician or engineer. However along with her father in jail, none of this was attainable.

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Once you get your first judicial remand, you suppose you can be in jail for 14 days, as a result of that’s the size of the remand. And these 14 days stretch to 14 years. It’s a sort of sluggish poison that you’re fed.

Consider the 5 males in our case who have been awarded the dying penalty by the trial courtroom. The attraction in opposition to this order took 10 years to be resolved. Think about, for 10 years they have been compelled to dwell with the dagger of dying hanging over their heads. Every day might carry them nearer to the gallows. I stated they have been compelled to dwell this fashion for 10 years. I ought to have stated, they have been compelled to die just a little like this day-after-day for 10 years. Day-after-day you grapple with the worry that information will come that the attraction is rejected and you’re marched to the gallows. You’re housed subsequent to the hanging room. Day-after-day, the gallows are oiled, and you’ll hear it. And also you suppose, these gallows are being readied for me. That is the sluggish poison that I converse of.

I salute the 2 judges of the Bombay Excessive Court docket. That they had the braveness, the daring, the imaginative and prescient, and the conscience, to take a look at 10 untruths and resolve that that is the one reality. If they didn’t have this braveness, these males can be dealing with the gallows. Regardless that they have been harmless and so they proceed to be harmless.

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After 19 years you’re launched from jail. The world has solely modified. I used to be travelling on the flight with Sajid Ansari, one of many males who was simply launched. He got here to Delhi to satisfy his household right here. He stated to me, “I’m travelling in a aircraft after 19 years”. I requested him, “How did you journey by aircraft 19 years in the past?” It was the ATS, he stated, that had flown him to Bangalore for a narco-test.

He was confused at each flip within the airport. All the things had modified. He couldn’t step on to an escalator. We get used to doing many issues on the identical time: sipping our espresso, speaking on the cellphone, lining up for our check-in, and so forth. In jail, you do just one factor at a time. Sajid stated, I’m feeling dizzy.

What ought to the state do? After the acquittal and launch order, inside 24 hours the Maharashtra authorities had reached the Supreme Court docket with an attraction. This type of hostility to a piece of residents is shameful.

To start with, the impunity that the police take pleasure in should finish. After we have been tortured, the police have been absolutely assured that no hurt might come to them. They have been protected by the house ministry, by the federal government. Even when somebody died in torture, it might take them no time to transform the dying from a torture killing to an “encounter” (claiming that the police needed to kill him in self-defence as a result of he tried to kill policepersons).

Allow us to speak subsequent of compensation for innocents who spent lengthy years in jail. Individuals advise us to strategy the courts. I don’t perceive this. After we have been accused, we needed to discover legal professionals to defend us. After we are harmless, we nonetheless have to seek out legal professionals to strategy courts to compensate us. Does society owe us no accountability? Does no accountability vest with the federal government? Parliament ought to carry a legislation for obligatory compensation.

Sajid stated to me: what compensation in the entire world can compensate for the 19 years that we spent in jail? Calculate this – my life, my spouse, my kids, they have been all snatched away from me. My youth, are you able to carry again my youth? What’s the price of all of this?

I stated to Sajid – for an harmless man to spend 19 years in jail, the compensation needs to be at the least 19 crore rupees.

Sajid stated, no, even this isn’t sufficient.

“The compensation that I search is that in future, no harmless individual needs to be framed like I used to be. No harmless individual ought to need to spend time in jail like I did. That is the one compensation that I search”.

These have been his phrases.

[Harsh Mander, justice and peace worker and writer, leads Karwan e Mohabbat, a people’s campaign to counter hate violence with love and solidarity. He teaches at FAU University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and Heidelberg University, Germany; Vrije University, Amsterdam; and IIM, Ahmedabad. Courtesy: Scroll.in, an Indian digital news publication, whose English edition is edited by Naresh Fernandes.]