While the 17 bomb blasts on July 26, which left 49 dead and over 100 injured, are the most recent wounds to Ahmedabad’s psyche, the shadows of the 228 ‘missing’ persons from the post-Godhra riots of 2002 have left scar tissue that remains raw to this day. When nine-year-old Muzaffar was recently found alive and well almost seven years after he was wrenched away from his parents during the massacre in Ahmedabad’s Gulbarg Society on February 28, 2002, the story made national news, probably because his survival defied all odds. And even though Muzaffar’s story has taken a bittersweet turn, with him refusing to leave the Hindu foster family that took care of him ever since he was a toddler, his biological family has something that hundreds of others here crave for: an answer.

In a small two-bedroom Housing Board flat in Bapunagar, a mother can’t bear to put a picture of her missing son on the wall because then, she says, her tears won’t stop. At another smaller house nestled between office-desk-wide lanes in Rakhial, two children do not remember much about their mother but still long to have her back, even though they grew up without her. Another father still hopes that his two-year-old daughter managed to survive the rampaging mobs and will one day knock on his door.

Every day is a living hell for him, says Mebla Hussain, a lathe mechanic, whose son Mohsin was killed and two-year old daughter Aafreen went missing from Naroda Patiya on February 28, 2002. He says, “If she is dead, was she buried, is she resting in peace? If she is alive, then how is she living? This uncertainty is maddening.” Hussain who remarried two years ago and is struggling to rebuild his life has searched everywhere for his daughter. He knows his chances of finding Aafreen are slim. After all, his sister-in-law, who had been holding his daughter, hadn’t been able to survive the murderous mobs that day. “I searched for my daughter in the heap of mangled, mutilated, burnt bodies. I removed 19 children from the pile but she was not there. Who knows what happened?”

... contd.