Mumbai: Within hours of a high-intensity car explosion in front of Delhi’s Red Fort on November 10, a team of Mumbai police reached the house of Muzammil Ataur Rahman Shaikh in Mira Road. Shaikh, who had returned home only two months earlier after 19 years of incarceration and acquittal by the Bombay high court, was taken aback.“A constable from the nearby police station came over and demanded I click a selfie with him. It was a strange demand,” says Shaikh, who spent two decades in jail in the 2006 serial train blast case only to be acquitted on July 21 this year, along with 11 others.Until that moment, Shaikh was unaware of the explosion in Delhi and the reason for the sudden police visit. “I called my co-accused in the case and they told me that the police had landed at their places too. That is when I found out about the explosion,” he says.An engineer by profession, Muzammil had worked in Bengaluru before the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) arrested him in 2006. The visit, though brief, revived memories of raids and sudden police appearances for Shaikh. “We were booked in a false case, suffered nearly two decades, and the police are still finding ways to trouble us,” he said. Soon after the visit, Shaikh sent complaint letters to the Mumbai Police Commissioner.Around the same time, another police team visited Sajid Ansari’s house nearby. “I protested initially but later thought that a photo with the police, carrying a time stamp, might actually help…At least they can’t later book me falsely and claim I was involved in planting the bomb,” he says.Also read: They Were Jailed or Acquitted Years Ago, Yet Police Keeps Visiting Their FamiliesAnsari, who ran a mobile repair shop in suburban Mumbai, had been accused of “preparing circuits” for the multiple bombs that killed 189 people on different trains on Mumbai’s Western Line on July 11, 2006. After 19 years, the Bombay high court found no evidence against him or the 11 others who had endured the long incarceration. In the days that followed, Maharashtra police reached almost all of them, ostensibly to verify their whereabouts. None of the teams carried the required court order or any legal document to justify the sudden visits.Around 500 kilometres away in Jalgaon, Asif Khan too had local police at his door. Khan says the police have been frequenting the area for days. “They have been meeting my neighbours and asking if I am seen around and whether I step out often,” the 53-year-old told The Wire. He sees it as an intimidation tactic. “The police want to tell me they have their eyes on me and also want the world to be wary of me,” he says.Asif Khan with his mother Husnabano. Photo: By arrangement.Khan, who worked in a Mumbai real-estate firm before his arrest, is back in his hometown after acquittal. “It is no longer feasible to live in Mumbai,” he says of the city where he once lived and worked.“I have been desperately looking for a job. Things have changed so much in the last two decades. The office where I worked before my arrest no longer exists. I tried the old landline number and was told the premises no longer belong to the real-estate firm I once worked for. I am struggling to get my life back on track, and now the police have started harassing me all over again,” says the former death-row convict.The police visits were not limited to just those arrested in the case. A computer engineer, who the police had shown as a “prime witness” in the case and who later turned hostile during the trial also alleged continuous police harassment for close to two decades. “The ATS had illegally detained me for several days and then later, forcibly extracted a statement against people I barely knew,” he alleges. He says he spoke the truth in court. He was later declared hostile. His problems didn’t end there. Every time there is a terror attack, anywhere in the county, the police land at his place, he says. “After the Delhi blast, a team of Mumbai police’s Crime Branch unit landed at his place at 2:30 am,” he mentions in a complaint to the police chief. In the letter, he writes that the police landed at an ungodly hour only to check if he was home. “I was away at my in-laws’ when the police arrived. My wife and children were traumatised and began crying. When I reached home and asked what the matter was, the police said it was a routine check,” he says. The witness has complained of his ongoing complaint to the Maharashtra State Human Rights Commission in the past but says that he did not get any response. Abdul Wahid Shaikh, one of the first to be acquitted in the case in 2015, continues to face regular police harassment even now. Over the years he has written to the police, petitioned higher courts and human rights commissions, yet the sudden, unannounced visits have not stopped. Since his release a decade ago, Wahid has resumed his old job at a school, continued his legal education, and even completed doctoral research on the history of prisons in India.In a deeply personal piece published in The Wire soon after the Delhi blast, Wahid wrote about his fear that after every terror incident he might again become a victim of “state terror.”Having endured police high-handedness and constant surveillance for years, Wahid says the only way to cope is to push back. His legal training helps. In desperation, he has installed CCTV cameras around and even inside his house. When police turn up, he at least has electronic evidence of their harassment and proof of his presence at home if another explosion occurs anywhere in the country.A screengrab of a video shot at Mohammed Ali’s house.Mohammed Ali, 56 and the oldest among the 13 accused, has adopted the same strategy. Along with petitioning senior police authorities and courts, he now videotapes the officers when they arrive. So, when local police reached his Govandi residence soon after the Delhi blast, Ali demanded a legal notice while his family continued to record the interaction. “They didn’t have any legal sanction to knock at my door like this, and certainly not without a court order. So, I made sure they admitted they were acting unlawfully,” he says.For house searches, the police are required to obtain a court order under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita. “But in these cases, they aren’t even pretending to conduct searches. It is purely to harass. And this time, we won’t stay silent,” Ali says.