"Justice was delivered, but late...": Family of acquitted 2006 Mumbai blasts accused

Jalgaon (Maharashtra) [India], July 23 (ANI): Asif Khan from Maharashtra's Jalgaon is one of the 12 people acquitted by the Bombay High Court on Monday in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts case. As he returns to his family after spending 19 years in jail, they express their happiness. However, they also said that justice was delayed, asking who would compensate them for the lost years.
"I am extremely happy. Justice was delivered, but late," Nishat Asif Khan, Asif Khan's wife, told ANI.
"More than half of our lives are gone. Who will compensate for that?... We faced numerous difficulties," she added.
She said that when the police arrested her husband, their younger daughter was just two years old, another daughter was four years old, and the elder son was eight years old.
"No one can fill the void of a father... When the blast happened, our son had called him and he had said, 'I am just coming home'... At that time, all of us in the family lived together in Mumbai... He was falsely framed through false allegations... He will come home tomorrow morning," she said.
Asif Khan's mother, Husna Bano Bashir Khan, told ANI that her "innocent" son received justice late.
"We were very happy that he was released with honour. He got justice, but too late... My child was innocent... The last 19 years were spent in a lot of pain... His father had passed away 14 years ago in grief. He kept waiting... We can never get back these past years of his life," she said.
"We haven't seen our son's face in so many years. We had met him five to six years ago. The conditions at home were not such that we could go and meet him again and again. Even when we could go and meet him, we were allowed to only talk for 20 minutes," she added.
Meanwhile, the Maharashtra government has filed an appeal in the Supreme Court challenging the Bombay High Court's order.
The plea was mentioned on Tuesday before a bench led by the Chief Justice of India (CJI) BR Gavai, by Solicitor General of India (SGI) Tushar Mehta, who requested that the plea be taken up urgently by the top court. The Court listed the matter for hearing on Thursday, July 24.
The High Court had on Monday acquitted the twelve accused persons, noting that the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) had failed to prove the offences beyond a reasonable doubt.
In doing so, the High Court set aside a September 2015 judgment of the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crimes Act (MCOCA) court that had imposed the death penalty on 5 of the 12 accused persons and had sentenced the remaining 7 to life. (ANI)