At ground zero, Godhra, it was time for some wary relief tinged with lingering suspicion on Tuesday, after the Supreme Court upheld the POTA Review Committee’s recommendation to lift the stringent Act from those accused in the 2002 train burning incident.

Newsline caught up with two of the families coping with their loved ones being locked up under POTA, for the last six years.

For Mohammed Abdul Sattar Majmu, 70, the news that his blind son, Ishaq Mohammed Majmu is likely to get off POTA’s stringent provisions, is like an unfulfilled election promise.

“Journalists from all over had trooped into my house, discussing our plight. My son is a blind man. How could he have been guilty? Yet, has anything happened that will spare him?” asked Abdul Sattar in his two room tenement in Godhra town.

Between the frequent power-cuts, the septuagenarian rued over the failure of the state to protect his 35-year-old son who was blind since birth. “I won't believe in any judgments till my son walks free. It seems all the courts are owned by the Gujarat government,” said Sattar, who lost his wife, Kulsum Biwi, on December 7, 2002.

According to Sattar, his wife would weep every night till the day she died of a heart attack thinking about Ishaq, her blind unmarried son, who was picked up by a ‘dabba’ or a police van from their shop in April 2002 on allegations that he was one of the perpetrators who burnt the S-6 coach of the Sabarmati Express in February 2002.

Ishaq’s younger brother, Shabbir, said that over the past seven years since his arrest, the family has been able to meet Ishaq just thrice. “From my scrap business I can manage just Rs 60-80 a day and it takes Rs 200 to go to Ahmedabad,” says Shabbir, adding that his brother met the family twice on police parole, when some neighbours and friends pitched in with Rs 10,000. “The four policemen, who come with him, also need to be fed. Else they make haste and don’t let Ishaq free even for the allotted time,” added Shabbir, one of the four brothers of Ishaq. His other family members are laari-owners.

On the other hand, Abdul Sattar recalls the night when the police picked up Ishaq from the shop. “When we went to the police inspector at the Godhra Town Police Station with the doctor's certificate saying that he is blind, they realised that they cannot book him for killing anyone. Next thing we knew was, he was booked for inciting the mob,” said Sattar.

Signal Faliya, where the incident occurred, is about three kilometres from Abdul Sattar’s house. Sattar, who is himself partially blind, said: “We didn’t even let him go to the chowkdi alone, and these policemen say that Ishaq walked all the way to Signal Faliya and shouted slogans from the railway tracks .”

Elsewhere, at Ruhul Amin Hathila’s residence at Chabildas nee Chali, his wife, Najma, could not help beaming over an old photograph of her husband, who had prepared about 50 bail applications of those who have been arrested right after the train carnage by the Godhra police. “We have been married for the last 16 years, but for the last seven years it became unbearable when I had to re-assure the children and his old mother that he will soon be released," says Najma.

For the two children, Razzaq and Zeenab, studying in the Zakir Hussain High School, the daily routine has remained unchanged. “Rezzaq would ask me many questions everyday, while Zeenab was too young to understand what was going on. All I did was to keep saying that he was innocent and will be released soon,” said Najma.

“He was sleeping when around 11 PM in April they came and picked him up. The police officers kept turning us away," said Najma, who lost her father-in-law, Haji Hussain Hathila, a former Godhra Railway Station employee, while Ruhul was lodged in jail.