Mumbai: Ten years after he was cleared of all charges in the infamous July 7, 2006 Mumbai serial train blasts case, Wahid Deen Mohammad Shaikh has moved the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) seeking compensation for his prolonged incarceration.

Shaikh, now 46, was arrested with 12 others soon after the bomb blasts in 2006 and continued to languish in jail until his acquittal in 2015.

Along with the NHRC, he has also forwarded his complaint to the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission, the Maharashtra State Minorities Commission and the National Minorities Commission.

In his complaint, Shaikh has highlighted the grave injustice that both he and his family were subjected to – the custodial torture inflicted on him and the heavy weight of being termed as a “terrorist” that he had to carry for so long. He has sought Rs 9 crore in compensation, a crore each for every year he had to spend behind bars in case he was falsely implicated.

Shaikh was a teacher at a city-based school at the time of his arrest. On his return, he resumed work but also went on to pursue a law degree and recently was awarded a PhD for his thesis on the history of prisons in India.

After his acquittal, Shaikh set up an organisation called the Innocence Network, which campaigned for the release of the others in the case who were languishing in jail.

In July, the Bombay high court acquitted them all after 19 years of incarceration.

Five persons – Kamal Ansari, Mohammad Faisal Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Ehtesham Qutubuddin Siddiqui, Naveed Hussain Khan and Asif Khan – were awarded the death penalty by a Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court in 2015.

The seven others who were sentenced to life (unto death) by the MCOCA court are Tanveer Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim Ansari, Mohammed Majid Mohammed Shafi, Shaikh Mohammed Ali Alam Shaikh, Mohammed Sajid Margub Ansari, Muzammil Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Suhail Mehmood Shaikh and Zameer Ahmed Latiur Rehman Shaikh. Kamal Ansari died in 2021.

The Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad arrested 13 men under the MCOCA, accusing them of involvement in the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba-backed plot.

The Maharashtra government moved the Supreme Court soon after the Bombay high court's judgement. The apex court, however, refused to send them back to jail. And until the state's appeal is heard, the apex court has now ordered a stay on the judgement of the high court to the extent that it won't be treated as a precedent in other MCOCA matters.

After a decade of silence, Shaikh now wants to pursue his fight for accountability. He had waited all along for his co-defendants to be released before he could pursue his fight for justice.

“Just like me, these are all innocent men, but their fight continued for much longer than mine. So, I stayed focussed all along in advocating for their release. Now that they are all released, I wanted to seek justice for my wrongful arrest and torture,” Shaikh told The Wire.

“But now that the others have also been acquitted, it is clear that the entire case was a forgery, and therefore, my demand for compensation becomes even more legitimate and urgent,” he added.

In his complaint, Shaikh details the brutal custodial torture that he had to endure as well as its after-effects. After his release, he says, his torture has manifested as severe chronic health issues, including glaucoma and persistent body pain, which require ongoing medical care.

His family too suffered immensely, he says. His father passed away while he was in jail, his mother's mental health deteriorated and his wife single-handedly raised their young children amid financial ruin and social stigma.

“My children grew up with the stigma of being called ‘a terrorist's children’ and were deprived of their father's presence in their formative years,” Shaikh says in his complaint. His family faced extreme hardship, accruing a debt of nearly Rs 30 lakh for medical and living expenses. His career and education were derailed. Post-release, he restarted from scratch as a teacher, and says he is still burdened by his wrongful accusation.

“I lost the most important years of my youth, my liberty and my dignity. No money can return the nine years I lost, nor can it undo the pain inflicted on my loved ones. But compensation is a way of acknowledging that what happened to me was wrong, and ensuring that no other innocent person suffers the way I did,” he says.

He adds that his demand for Rs 9 crore in compensation from the state should in no way be looked at as “charity”, but as “recognition of the grave injustice” meted out to him.

In his complaint, Shaikh relies upon the 2018 Supreme Court order in the complaint of Nambi Narayanan, an aerospace scientist who worked for the Indian Space Research Organisation and was arrested in a 1994 espionage case.

Narayanan spent 50 days in jail. On the apex court’s order, the Kerala government paid him a final settlement of Rs 1.3 crore.

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