The brutal killing of 23-year-old Krishan aka Kiran Pande along with serial blast accused Mohammad Jindran on June 29 at Khar is a telling case. On that overcast, grim morning Pande left his one-room house with a bag containing a change of clothes, a bottle of oil, food and a pair of slippers for his father recovering at Nanavati hospital from an open heart surgery.

Between 9.15 and 9.30 am at the bus-stop on S V Road he spotted Jindran who lived a few metres away from him. Just then unidentified gunmen pumped bullets into Jindran. Pande who saw them from close quarters ran for his life. The gunman followed him into a garage wherePande slipped on the monsoon slush. The gangsters closed in on him and shot him at point blank range.

In his house at Jai Bharat Society, his mother sits with a glazed look believing that Kiran will return and his distraught elder sister Draupadi rifles through a file containing his mark-sheets, sundry certificates, his resume that tells you he was a science graduate from National College, Bandra and that he had done a course in digital editing. She desperately hopes that these pieces of paper will wipe away the blot on her brother's name that he was an ``associate'' of Jindran. ``He was such a quiet, helpful boy. It is impossible that Kiran was associated with him,'' says a neighbour.

The police maintain otherwise. They say they have found a visitor's pass to Nanavati hospital where Pande's father is admitted, from Jindran's pocket. ``Pande definitely knew him or else why would the killers ignore hundreds of other eye-witnesses and chase this boy alone?'' asks the senior police officer. ``Who is to saywhat happened there? The police was not on the spot. My brother was such a darpok (coward). Maybe, if he had pretended like the others that he had seen nothing they would have ignored him. Perhaps by running away he brought attention to himself and the fact that he had seen the killers,'' counters Draupadi.

Perhaps. But as of now, in the unwritten rule book of the police, Pande is deemed guilty till proved innocent.

``Well we have to begin our investigations somewhere and the background of the victim is the best place to start,'' justifies the senior officer who spoke to us. But what happens often with this line of thinking is that for the families of victims, the trauma of losing someone is only exacerbated by the stigma of alleged association with the Underworld.

``Media reports the day after my brother's death quoted police as saying he had links with Dawood,'' says Shahid Shaikh, brother of 34-year-old garment exporter Shabbir who was killed at Oshiwara on May 14 by gangsters in a case of mistakenidentify.

``Despite Shabbir's violent death my two other sons are moving around freely. Would I allow them to do so if we had anything to fear from the underworld?'' asks his mother Qamrunissa.

For Shabbir's brothers, Shahid and Munnawar, the nightmare began after their brother's death. To prove Shabbir's innocence the Shaikhs submitted themselves to extensive questioning by the police, went to individual newspapers to publish a correction, tried to convince clients not to back out of business deals and are now running around to see that the case is not closed after the mandatory 90 days. ``There has to be some justice,'' says Qamrunissa. Her son's life, she says, cannot just end with a simple verdict: killed as a result of mistaken identity.

This desire for ``justice'' keeps each family of innocent victims of shoot-outs going. Bhushan Patil's father, an accountant in Voltas, has spent days compiling the minutest information pertaining to his 17-year-old son's senseless death in a cross-fire in Thane.From police bulletins, to post-mortem report to transcripts of the discussion in the Assembly on his son's death -- all these are records preserved in a neat file. There is also a videotape prepared by a reporter of Thane Vartahaar, a local cable news network that shows Bhushan Patil lying on the road unattended as flies swarm on his congealed blood, giving lie to Thane police claims that he was taken to the hospital within ``two and a half seconds''.

Elex Rodrigues has lost count of the number of times he has met policemen from commissioner Ronnie Mendonca to the area DCP to the officer investigating his son's case.

On May 3, Keith Rodrigues, a steward at Copper Chimney restaurant at Saki Naka, was shot dead by gunmen allegedly owing allegiance to gangster Ali Budesh. ``On the day Keith died, instead of telling us how this had happened, the police wanted to question me on any links my son or I might have with gangsters. ``They wanted to find out how we knew Ali Budesh.. I was not even aware of whothis man was. It was only the next day when I went to the JJ Hospital mortuary that I saw my son's body lying on a slab of ice and on his palm I saw a number scribbled in faint ink and the name Ali Budesh.'' The men who killed Keith had scribbled this to serve as a warning to the restaurant management to pay up the extortion money. Elex, who also maintains a file of newspaper clippings about his son's death and goes through them every other day, cannot forget the police inquisition. ``They were so callous to us that day and today they have no proof that my son had underworld links,'' he says. But at least for the families of Keith and Shabbir there is small satisfaction that their kin have finally been categorised as ``innocent''. Among the statistics of death available with Mumbai Police there are many people like builder Altaf Furniturewallah and video shop owner Ketan Shah who were killed because they refused to pay extortion money. It is impossible to ascertain whether they were victims of fate orassociation. Then, there are others, lucky enough to survive but who live in constant fear of the telephone or the doorbell ringing again. The more affluent of these, like film director Rajiv Rai who was targeted in July last year, chose to settle abroad.

For others like starlet Poonam Das Gupta who, has been under voluntary house arrest for the last two weeks after Dawood henchman tried to abduct her, there is no home other than Mumbai.

Das Gupta, who was pronounced ``innocent'' by inspector Prakash George of special squad, zone V, thinks that may be she was targeted in a case of mistaken identity ``Really, why would anyone want to abduct me. I no longer have the figure I used to have and I am also old now,'' she says caught between tears and laughter. But then she is not taking any chances with her security. For, with the underworld, she knows, there is no take-II.