Mumbai:
After five years of darkness, there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel, finally, for the Malegaon blast accused. After spending half a decade in jail, seven of the nine accused are likely to walk free today after the National Investigation Agency (NIA) told a special MCOCA court that it wouldn't oppose their bail plea.
But has justice come a little late in the day? The young men were arrested in 2006 for orchestrating the dastardly attack in Malegaon the same year that killed 31 people. They were booked under the stringent Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) that denied them bail for five years.
Thrown into the darkness of the prison cells, the lives of these men had changed forever. One of them was Dr Farogh Iqbal Maqdumi. The 33-year-old doctor's children were too young to even understand what was going on when their father was picked up by the police.
"For the last 4-5 years, we have gone through a lot of trouble as we constantly heard about the torture these men went through inside the jail. The people of our village knew the truth and so they helped us cope with it," Dr Maqdumi's father said as he narrated the horror.
Dr Maqdumi's plight was shared by the other accused. Dr Salman Farsi, an allopathy doctor, was 35 when he was arrested. A father of three children, Dr Farsi's family was repeatedly humiliated by neighbours.
"We hope that justice is done to all others who are innocent and are spending their lives in jail. We can understand the plight of their families," said Nafisa Ansari, Dr Farsi's wife.
The reality only came to light after Swami Aseemanand's confession, one that he later retracted, which pointed to the involvement of right-wing groups. The case was then re-investigated.
There was fresh hope for the families of the accused in jail as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), in April this year, submitted a report to the NIA stating that the nine men arrested were innocent and that only members of the right-wing group arrested last year should be probed for the blasts. The special MCOCA court, hearing the case, finally granted them bail earlier this month.
"It is important to convict the real culprits behind the 2006 Malegaon blasts," Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan said.
But that may be cheap consolation for the families of the nine men. Even as they eagerly await their homecoming, questions would remain about who will compensate for the lost years.