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7/11 verdict: Hand across throat, five fingers; how convicts relayed sentence to families

After nine years of easy access to the courtroom and the corridors, there were no more shared lunches.

mumbai blasts 2006, mumbai blast verdict, 7/11 verdict news, mumbai 2006 blasts news, mumbai blasts, mumbai news, india news, 2006 mumbai blasts, mumbai blasts news, 7/11 blasts, 7/11 verdict, mumbai 7/11 Tanveer Ahmed Ansari, 41, holds out five fingers to convey that five convicts have been given death penalty. He was one of the seven convicts who were sentenced to life in jail by a MCOCA court in Mumbai on Wednesday. (Source: Express photo by Prashant Nadkar)

For more than two weeks they waved and smiled, pointed and mimed. Mouths opened and closed wordlessly as families struggled to communicate with the condemned across the abyss between two buildings divided in age by a century. At noon on Wednesday though, there were no perplexed faces on either side – all it took was a show of two hands, one that sliced the breadth of a neck and another that held out all five fingers. They understood.

Ever since special court Judge, Y. D. Shinde announced the conviction of 12 and the acquittal of one in the 2006 serial train blasts, restrictions have been put in place for the dozen to meet their families inside the sessions court. After nine years of easy access in the courtroom and the corridors, there would be no more shared lunches and patting of heads.

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It is then that the families noticed a row of white wooden windows on the third floor of the 141- year-old Old Secretariat building that look straight into the fifth floor of the court’s Annexe Building, where the special court is located.

Separated by at least forty feet and five stories high inside a large silence zone, they found that gestures served them best where words could not.

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Three of the twelve used their hands on Wednesday to tell waiting family members of their fates. While Sohail Mehmood Shaikh and Zameer Ahmed Latiur Rehman Shaikh both slashed their necks and displayed an outstretched palm to indicate the execution of five, Asif Khan, the fifth man sentenced to death, wrapped both hands around his neck. “He showed me a noose around his neck and held up five fingers,” said Anees Khan, a childhood friend of Asif, who like families of the other convicts was standing on Wednesday in a passageway that connects the two buildings. That’s because earlier in the day, they had unexpectedly found the third floor windows shuttered and bolted shut, forcing them to seek out openings in the passage.

Outside the courtroom, four men at a time flocked to one window with a local train grill keeping them at bay. Across the abyss, by 1.30 pm, the families had decided climb down to the second floor of the old secretariat to get an obstructed view. With four windows to choose from, each family sought out a window. “Basic questions are easy to understand, like how is your health?’ or ‘how are the kids?’,” said Sohail’s son Saeed, adding, “the distance is so great that they don’t ask anything more complicated than that and neither do we.”

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At the neighbouring window, Zameer’s uncle, who asked not to be named, ran a bony finger across his moustache and pointed at a thin young boy clothed in white. Up above, a grinning Zameer moved both hands in tandem down from his chin to a point a few inches ahead , as though stroking the whiskers of an invisible beard. “I showed Zameer that his son,” pushing the boy in white in front of the window, “had grown his first moustache. Zameer wants him to grow a beard next,” laughed the uncle as the son blushed and moved out of the frame.

Before long though, whether because of the blazing sun or the fact that he let it go long enough, a police constable closed down a window and asked the families vacate the rest. “Aaj ki hi toh baat hai. Kal se toh court nahi aayengey. Thodi der baat karne do (It is only about of one day. We won’t come to court tomorrow. Let us talk longer,” pleaded the uncle.

Anees, who had long since given up the conversation, said that Asif locks his hands and rocks a cradle every time he wants to know about his children. “The last time he saw them, they were really small. So I hold my hand some distance above the ground to show him how old they are now,” Anees said.

Police presence around the families became the standard on the second day of arguments for the quantum of punishment. After the families began flocking to the third floor windows, Assistant Police Inspector Sudarshan Chavan of the Colaba police station watched for a few minutes before coming to a decision and summoning a sub inspector. “Should I move them away?,” the sub inspector asked. “No, just keep a watch on them,” Chavan replied.

First uploaded on: 01-10-2015 at 03:26 IST
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