Boys return home bitter men, even firni can’t make it sweet

SRINAGAR: The return of Mohammad Hussain Fazili to his home in Srinagar on Saturday was met with celebratory songs and specially prepared festive dishes. But amid the happiness, no one forgot that the two men of the city, Fazili and Mohammad Rafiq Shah, had to needless spend 12 years of their lives in jail before being acquitted on Thursday of all complicity in the serial bomb blasts in Delhi in 2005.
“My son has had a rebirth, but I curse those who wrongly put him in jail,” said Fatima Fazili, of her son, while offering the long-lost man a bowl of special firni after he arrived home in Firdous Colony in downtown Srinagar.
As relatives and neighbours teemed around, Hussain recalled that he was quietly engaged in the shawl business with his father and brothers when he was picked up in November 2005 and whisked away to Delhi. There, Hussain, 30 at the time, said he had faced torture even as he kept insisting to the investigators that he was in Srinagar on October 29, the day of the blasts.
Like Hussain, Shah, 22 then, had inkling of the fate that awaited him. He was studying in the Department of Islamic Studies at Kashmir University at the time of his arrest. On Saturday, the family house at Alesteng in Dargah Hazratbal on the outskirts of Srinagar was locked, and a neighbour, Ghulam Qadir, said that Shah’s parents had left for Delhi to accompany their only son home.
However, speaking over the phone, Shah’s mother, Mehbooba Yasin, said, “We were always hopeful about his acquittal because he was innocent.” But there was clear anger in her voice when she added, “He lost more than a decade of his life due to false allegations. We are a poor family and our son was our only hope for a better life.”
Delhi Police had taken Shah into custody from the campus even when the university authorities had provided proof in the form of his class attendance on the day of the Delhi blasts. Naseem Ahmed Shah, formerly of the Department of Islamic Studies, was quite indignant, saying, “You arrest an innocent man and ruin his life. After a decade you say sorry to him. Action has to be taken against police officers who implicate innocent people in false cases.”