When all the analysis has been done of the stunning Bombay High Court verdict acquitting all the accused in the July 2006 Mumbai train blasts, will the two main players get any part of the blame?
The Congress-NCP government, headed by Vilasrao Deshmukh with RR Patil as the Home Minister, and the mainstream press that covered the arrests, are as culpable in destroying the lives of the 13 accused, as the Mumbai police - especially the Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) - then headed by KP Raghuvanshi.
This officer has been mostly spared in the detailed coverage of the verdict, though the accused were set free only because of the flawed, and indeed, malevolent investigation carried out directly under his direction. I remember asking Raghuvanshi for his reaction to the affidavits filed by some of the families of the accused and suspects, soon after the blasts.
The affidavits detailed the torture inflicted on their family members, who had been picked up to pressurise them to turn in wanted members of their families.
Entire families were whisked away to different lock-ups; there was no formal arrest. A husband was stripped in front of his wife; a father in front of his sons; a sister-in-law’s burqa was yanked off, flung on the face of her accused brother-in-law, and trampled underfoot. The men were threatened that every woman of the family would be given the same treatment. For days after that, one of these women would get up in the middle of the night, screaming and wanting to run away, her brother told me.