When two-year-old Zareen Haspatel dug out that piece of metal from a lakebed near her house, her eyes lit up. That's a new toy, she thought, and took it home. The ‘toy’ was a seemingly innocuous bobbin, the kind used in textile mills in Satara district, but it was enough to put the Haspatel family through 14 days of horror.

Those were dangerous times in Maharashtra. A series of blasts had ripped through Mumbai and the police were conducting raids throughout the state, arresting several people suspected of helping prime accused Dawood Ibrahim. The Haspatels had nothing to do with the blast — they were just another middle class family from Shrivardhan village in Raigad district, where most of the explosives had been unloaded.

April 13, 1993. A day after the blasts, Iqbal Haspatel, the head of the family, then about 54, was in his living room. It was just another day and the Haspatel women were going about their work. At 10.30 a.m., Iqbal got up to check the commotion outside his house. More than 50 policemen were at his door.

Before he could react, the policemen, led by Tikaram Bhal, senior superintendent of Raigad, barged in. ‘‘They began thrashing and abusing us, saying ‘Tum desh drohi ho. Gaddar ho. Dawood ke aadmi ho. Tumhare ghar mein missles hai jisse Bal Thackeray ko maarna hai. Tum jeene ke laayak nahi ho (You are traitors, Dawood’s men. You have missiles in you house)’. We had no clue what was happening,’’ recalls Iqbal.

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