Mumbai: Shaikh Mohammed Ali Alam Shaikh’s children were barely in school when he was arrested for his alleged role in the July 11, 2006 Mumbai train blast case. For over a decade, as the trial continued before the special MCOCA (Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act) court in Mumbai, police from various departments visited Ali’s house every Thursday to inquire about his whereabouts. Mohammad Ali. Photo: By arrangement.“My father was in their custody, yet they would visit us and ask innocuous questions every week,” says one of his sons. The visits gradually became less frequent in 2015 when the MCOCA court convicted Ali along with 11 others. Ali was sentenced to life imprisonment.However, a decade later, just as one of Ali’s sons completed his education and found a job in the city, the police visits resumed. In a complaint to the Mumbai Police Commissioner, Ali’s wife, Saidunnisha, stated that unidentified police officers visit their residence and ask about Ali’s whereabouts, despite him having been in jail for nearly 20 years. The harassment has intensified, with police also contacting the sons and repeatedly asking the same questions. “These questions make little sense to us, but we know that this is their roundabout way of signalling that we are under constant watch,” says Ali’s elder son.Similar ongoing harassmentThis scrutiny extends beyond Mohammed Ali’s family to nearly everyone involved in the case, including Abdul Wahid Shaikh, who was acquitted of all charges and released in 2015. Abdul Wahid Shaikh at his house. Photo: File/The Wire.Shaikh is now a teacher at one of South Mumbai’s oldest Urdu schools and recently submitted his doctoral thesis on prisoners’ rights. He describes the ongoing harassment he and his family endure despite his acquittal. “Every few days, the police knock on my door or contact me by phone. I refuse to comply without a summons, which they never provide,” Shaikh says.Shaikh has documented each instance of harassment and has lost count of the times he has informed the commissioner’s office. “The complaints reach the higher-ups, and the harassment pauses for a few months before starting again,” he adds.Shaikh was incarcerated for over nine years before his acquittal. He has consistently maintained that the 12 others convicted in the terror case are innocent and runs a campaign called ‘Innocence Network’. Among the 12 convicted, five – Kamal Ansari, Mohammad Faisal Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Ehtesham Qutubuddin Siddiqui, Naveed Hussain Khan, and Asif Khan – were awarded death sentences. The others – 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 Latifur Rehman Shaikh – were sentenced to life imprisonment. Those convicted approached the Bombay high court soon after the judgment. Their appeals and the prosecution’s move to confirm death sentences (a prerequisite for capital punishment to prove the case falls under the “rarest of rare” category) are pending before the high court. The verdict in these pleas is expected in the coming month.Since their arrests in 2006, the 12 have remained behind bars. Except for a few instances where some were granted temporary bail to attend the funerals of close relatives over the past two decades, the courts have consistently denied them bail or parole, the short periodic leave that prisoners are typically entitled to.‘We are sent a bunch of questions’“What could you possibly learn from keeping these people in custody for all this time?” asks Sharif, Zameer’s elder brother. Zameer was 31 when he was arrested and will soon turn 50. Convicted for his alleged role in the serial blasts that killed 189 people and injured 824, Zameer has left prison only once – for a few hours – when his mother passed away a few years ago. “Yet the police still come to us, asking for details about the very case they have been handling for two decades,” Sharif says.Zameer. Photo: By arrangementUntil five years ago, Sharif’s family also faced frequent police visits. “They asked about Zameer and even my personal life. I patiently responded for years, but when they started demanding details about our sisters and their families, I decided to push back,” he says. Sharif filed a complaint against a senior Crime Branch officer, which temporarily halted the visits. However, last week, on Friday, May 30, two plainclothes policemen visited his residence and resumed similar inquiries.While through these baseless inquiries the police have continued to harass the families, a few officers who spoke to The Wire, and who have participated in these home visits, defended themselves by claiming that they are “simply following orders from their superiors”. “We are sent with a bunch of questions, we simply go and ask them,” said a police constable, who had recently been to the house of one of the convicted prisoners in the train blast case. Prolonged harassmentThe recent visits to the homes of those convicted in the train terror case appear to be part of a broader police profiling exercise underway in the city.Shaikh reports receiving calls from several individuals across Mumbai who faced trials in cases related to the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) organisation or other terror-related charges but were acquitted. “They are not maintaining a database of convicted persons reintegrated into society. This exercise is blatant criminal profiling of innocent people, whom the state refuses to treat as such, even after their acquittal by the courts,” Shaikh emphasises.Fed up with the constant harassment, Shaikh, like several others who have faced incarceration in the past, installed CCTVs around his house. This forced self-surveillance, Shaikh had said in a 2023 interview with The Wire, was the only way to ensure that the police do not cause physical harm to him or his family members and, most importantly, do not plant false evidence against him. The Wire had interviewed several such formerly incarcerated persons across India who have been forced to set up cameras in and outside their houses to simply ward off the police. Even then, Shaikh says, the harassment continued. In October 2023, his house was raided by the National Investigation Agency for his alleged role in a case against members of the banned Popular Front of India (PFI). Shaikh was later called to Lucknow, questioned and then released. “But they had raided my house as if I was a dreaded terrorist hiding in the city.”Years ago, when the Delhi tribunal, periodically set up to evaluate the validity of the ban on SIMI, visited Maharashtra, the state government claimed that Shaikh was part of the banned organisation. He was also incorrectly addressed as a “convicted terror accused”. Shaikh had to approach the Delhi high court to have this factually incorrect information expunged from the order. “The court has acquitted me of all charges, and I have no pending cases or trials against me, but the state refuses to see me as a lawful citizen,” Shaikh says.