As I left, a middle-aged woman clutched my arm. “You will tell them won’t you?” Hasina Sonde implored desperately. “You will tell them he was innocent. You will tell those sahibs in Bombay to give me back my son?”

Today, after thirteen years, 13,000 pages of evidence and 686 witnesses, it’s judgment day for 123 accused in the Bombay Blasts Case of 1993. Ironically, most of them have already completed a life sentence in jail, even before they are declared guilty.

Meanwhile, those who masterminded the apocalypse are still absconding. So Dawood Ibrahim, Tiger Memon and Mustafa Dossa continue their reign of terror by remote control, across a porous border. Last week, while the Mumbai municipality demolished illegal structures in the heart of the city, one illicit mall still stood insolently. It is known to belong to Dawood Ibrahim.

Unfair? There’s an old folk proverb that Shekhadi probably knows well: when you go after the small fish, the big fish always get away.

Now, we are back to the future. Another holocaust. Another case. And that vague disquiet of the déjà vu.

• One day after the train blasts in Mumbai last month, 250 slum dwellers were dragged out of their beds in a pre-dawn police swoop, all from Muslim bastis. Many of them were detained for days, in flagrant violation of criminal procedure.

• Two days after the attack, a Muslim businessman was detained at the Mumbai international airport and grilled for eight hours, to uncover a possible “terrorist link.” The gentleman was let off only after it became horribly evident that he had come to attend the funeral of his son — who was killed by the bombs.

... contd.