Freed after 19 years, India train blast accused look to rebuild lives
After 19 years behind bars, Mohammad Sajid Margub Ansari can finally hold his daughter in his arms.
Ansari, now 48, was one of 12 men convicted in 2015 for murder, conspiracy and waging war against India over the 2006 train blasts.
The evening rush-hour attacks, carried out with pressure-cooker bombs hidden in bags beneath newspapers and umbrellas, killed 187 people and wounded hundreds more.
Five of the accused were sentenced to death, while the other seven including Ansari were given life imprisonment.
At the time of the blasts, Ansari was just 29, running a modest mobile and computer repair shop.
He was arrested soon after the explosions, reportedly accused of assembling the bombs and sheltering two Pakistani nationals.
But this week, a two-judge bench of the Bombay High Court overturned the convictions, ruling that the prosecution had "utterly failed" to prove the men were responsible.
The prosecution appealed to the Supreme Court to halt their release, but it declined to intervene.
"It feels amazing to be free," Ansari told AFP. "We are innocent."
Freedom, however, feels bittersweet for Ansari.
"My whole youth is gone. My family had to face financial troubles," he said.
His wife was pregnant when Ansari was arrested, leaving him to miss his daughter's entire childhood. In her early years, she wouldn't even come near him.
"As a dad that felt terrible, that I could not hold my own daughter," he said.
"I used to feel very helpless and think why do we have to go through all this when I am innocent."
The 2006 attacks were initially blamed on the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, although a little-known outfit, Lashkar-e-Qahhar, later claimed responsibility.
Pakistan denied the allegations.
For survivor Chirag Chauhan, who was paralysed from the waist down in one of the blasts, the acquittal of the men felt like being dragged "back to square one".
"We don't know what to do and where to start from. The entire system is hopeless," he told AFP.
In 2006, Chauhan, now 40, was returning home from chartered accountancy training when the train he boarded was hit by an explosion.
Prosecutors said the explosives were deliberately placed in first-class coaches to target the city's wealthy Gujarati community.
They also said the bombings were intended as revenge for riots in the western state of Gujarat in 2002, which left around 2,000 people dead, most of them Muslims.
A spinal cord injury left Chauhan requiring the use of a wheelchair.
"After 19 years if the accused are let free, who carried out the blasts then?" he asked.
But he also said there should be a "fair investigation", noting that the now freed men could have been framed.
"All are equally to be blamed, the judiciary, the investigative agencies, everyone," he said.
For Ansari, his years behind bars demand more than an acquittal.
"The agencies should be ashamed of what they did and should definitely apologise to us," he said.
While his old mobile and computer repair shop is no longer an employment option, given the advances in technology since he was imprisoned, Ansari is aiming to rebuild his life.
He plans to finish the undergraduate law degree which he enrolled in while in prison.
"I hope to put it to good use," he said.
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