After Each Incident of Terrorism, I Fear I will Fall Victim to the State's Terror

On November 10, a news alert flashed on my phone announcing a deadly bomb blast in Delhi. It sent shivers down my spine. I froze, shaken and unsure of how to process it. My heartbeat quickened as I sat alone .Within moments, I was sweating profusely – though I couldn’t tell whether it was fear, anxiety, or a deep, buried memory surfacing. To calm myself, I withdrew into solitude, trying to distract my mind from the headlines. This response to such a catastrophe is hardly unique; it is shared by every one of us who has ever been accused in these cases. We all begin to fear for ourselves in exactly the same way

Yet, one haunting thought refused to leave me: what if I am arrested in this case?

To some, that may sound like an absurd or exaggerated fear. After all, how could a person sitting miles away from Delhi imagine being implicated in a blast they had nothing to do with? But for people like me – those who have been branded terrorists and imprisoned for years under baseless charges – such fears are not paranoia. They are lived realities, permanently etched into our consciousness.

Because of the constant surveillance and harassment by the police, I have installed CCTV cameras all over my house. The monitor sits right in front of where I sleep, a silent witness to my fear and distrust of the guardians of law and order. That night, as I tried to fall asleep, even the faintest sound would jolt me awake. With a strange mixture of faith in myself and distrust of the agencies, I glanced at the monitor, half expecting to see shadows moving outside, half certain that the nightmares will return – that the police will come again, this time to destroy me completely, leaving nothing behind.

Loops of anxiety and uncertainty that offer no answers

Days and nights passed like this, in loops of anxiety and uncertainty, offering no answers, only the exhausting endurance of saying what the investigative agencies are up-to.

When I woke up the next morning, my phone wouldn’t stop ringing. I began receiving calls from people across the country – many of them being summoned by the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS). They sought my legal guidance, asking what they should do and how they should respond. As I spoke to them, a chilling certainty settled in me: the ATS already knew who was who, and who was guiding whom.

Later, when I went to school, the memories from nineteen years ago flooded back. It was just like then– an ordinary day, deceptively calm. I remembered August 15, the day I had gone to school, only to be taken away and return after nine long years of incarceration. The moment I stepped into the classroom this time, that old dread came alive again.

The disturbance didn’t vanish, but teaching at least gave me something to hold on to – a sustainable distraction, a way to keep my mind occupied so that those thoughts, though justified and born of experience, would not consume me entirely.

Any sound, however ordinary, felt like the beginning of their “setting,” as my co-accused Ehtesham Siddiqui described it – the careful, manufactured framing that begins long before an arrest is ever made.

What if the real perpetrators are caught? Would that end the matter? Of course not. It would not be treated as an isolated act of violence but as part of a grand conspiracy – a supposed plot by Muslims, the ultimate "anti-nationals and Jihadis" to capture India and turn it into an Islamic state. The hate towards Muslims would deepen, the hostility towards Islam would intensify, and even the most visible, peaceful expressions of faith would be treated with suspicion.

But what if the real perpetrators are never caught? What if the police, in their haste to show results, pick a few convenient targets – people who fit the stereotype, whose names are able to convince that they are “suspicious,” whose lives can be easily destroyed? And what if, years later, a court pronounces, as it did in the 7/11 Mumbai train blast case after nineteen long years, that there was no reliable evidence – that the accused were innocent all along? Who will return those lost years, those stolen lives?

Since my own arrest, I have grown deeply sceptical of the media’s war-mongering and its uncritical parroting of the police narrative. The press no longer investigates; it stenographs. We have seen, again and again, how the police fabricate evidence, plant explosives, and stage recoveries just to prove that ordinary Muslim citizens are “terrorists.” This pattern is not rare – it is systemic, sustained, and sanctioned by our collective moral rot.

We are all in favour of a fair and thorough investigation into such attacks. The perpetrators of these crimes – those who plant bombs and kill innocents – are not only a stain on humanity but a disgrace to Islam itself. They must be brought to justice.

Yet my mind could not rest. What if, in this pursuit, someone like me is arrested again? What if an innocent man is picked up, tortured, and coerced into confessing to crimes he never committed? Under the enormous pressure to produce quick results, the police often lose all sense of restraint and reason. They will go to any length to justify their errors – to mask incompetence with brutality.

These thoughts kept circling in my head, refusing to fade – a familiar storm of fear, memory, and disbelief at how easily justice can be turned into its opposite.

My concerns are not unfounded. When the Popular Front of India (PFI) was banned in 2022, my house was raided at five in the morning. What made the National Investigation Agency (NIA) come so stealthily at that hour? I was certain that if I had opened the door, they might have planted something inside and declared me a top PFI leader. I would have been arrested and left to languish in prison once again.

It was only because of my presence of mind – and the bitter lessons I had learned from past persecution – that their plan failed that morning. But I am also aware that such fortune cannot be counted on forever. When the police or the state decides to destroy you, no precaution, no law, no innocence can truly protect you.

Fear has seeped into my body and mind

The constant anxiety has taken a severe toll. My health has weakened, my immunity has fallen. As soon as the sun sets, I find myself confined to bed. Fear has seeped into my body and mind. Each time I think about what could have happened – or what might still happen – my strength drains further. The people targeted this time were from the upper echelons of Muslim society – engineers, doctors, highly qualified professionals. I fall into the same category. Strangely, my education – a Bachelors, Masters, LLB, LLM, and PhD – makes me a target. Simply for being educated, I fear for my life.

Some have asked whether this is happening for the first time. I tell them it is. Since my release, no major bomb blasts have occurred on mainland India. That makes the present moment all the more dangerous. It gives the agencies fertile ground to pick up people like me – those who speak against injustice – and be quietly silenced. These thoughts haunt me. That fear defines what it means to live as a Muslim with such a past in today’s India.

This is a reality well known to many of us. I often find a painful resemblance between our condition and the story of the naked emperor: in this context the emperor is the state, the police, judiciary and the political leadership. Everyone in the kingdom can see that the emperor is naked, yet no one dares to say it aloud. The question that remains, even today, is – who will say on the face of the emperor that his majesty is naked?

After my release, I was blessed with two more children. I raised them with the love I had been forced to withhold for years. My older children grew up without ever knowing a father’s embrace; their memories are of a man behind bars. When I look at my younger ones, a terrifying thought grips me – that they too might be deprived of a father’s presence, that they might inherit absence instead of affection. This fear unsettles everything: my faith, my strength, my sense of being. I do not want to leave them, but nothing seems certain. The only certainty the investigative agencies have created is uncertainty itself.

In an interview with Begunah Qaidi, journalist Muthiurrehman Siddique said, “Whenever I hear the police boasting of busting modules, catching terrorists or recovering incriminating evidence, I am no longer impressed. Most of these so-called witnesses and evidence are nothing more than fabrications, carefully crafted by the investigative agencies themselves.”

A majoritarian order thriving on division and injustice

It is indeed an irony. On the very day fear had gripped me, my wife called from school to tell me that our youngest son, Ashaar Ahmed, had been chosen to play Jawaharlal Nehru on Children’s Day. His Teachers say he reminds them of Nehru himself. I laughed, though bitterly. How strange that my son would embody the Nehru who promised protection, equality, and dignity to all, while the Nehruvian state turns its back on Muslims out of calculated bigotry.

Even so-called Nehruvian secularists have failed to confront the hate corroding our republic. Celebrating Nehru’s birth today feels like trampling on his vision, now replaced by a majoritarian order thriving on division and injustice.

Some confidants dismissed my anxiety, assuring me the authorities would not touch me. Perhaps they are right. But what of the mental toll – the sleepless nights, constant unease, and anxiety coursing through every moment? Who takes responsibility for that? I have demanded compensation for nine years of wrongful incarceration.

Physical imprisonment is measurable, but the invisible suffering persists. Over two months have passed since I filed my claim for nine crore rupees per year of incarceration. Until yesterday, when the Minority Commission summoned the commissioner of Mumbai Police, there had been no acknowledgment. What of the years lost, the lives disrupted, the constant fear imposed? This neglect is dangerous and must be stopped.

If I am arrested, what will happen to others who speak out like me? If I am targeted for exposing state oppression, the state is not only shameless in its persecution, it is even more shameless in silencing those who speak. democratic rights must be protected, accountability demanded.

When I met my former co-accused Zameer , who had been mentally impaired by years of incarceration. I could only wonder, what if I am arrested now? He has become almost childlike. Seeing him shocked me, and I fear for myself – that years of harassment and fear could one day reduce me in the same way. This is the reality we face, and it is why we must confront this hate that is eating the republic from within.

Abdul Wahid  Shaikh was one of the 13 accused in the 7/11 Mumbai train blast case. The Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) Mumbai accused him of being an active member of SIMI and of harbouring terrorists who allegedly came from Pakistan to carry out the attack in his house in Mumbra. He was tried and eventually acquitted by the special MCOCA court in 2015. There were no recoveries against him, and no confession of his was recorded under Section 18 of MCOCA. Despite this, he endured nine years of wrongful incarceration. Since his release, he has dedicated himself to advocating for judicial and police reforms.

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