Can’t take it anymore, says wife of Akshardham accused in jail for cow slaughter now

BAREILLY: Chand Khan spent 11 years in jail for his alleged role in the Akshardham attack of 2002 before the Supreme Court acquitted him in 2014 along with five others. But his freedom was short-lived. Both in 2015 and this year, he was again arrested in separate cases of cow slaughter and is now lodged in the Pilibhit jail. All this while, those suffering the most have been his wife, 42-year-old Nagma Parveen, and their two daughters.
One of the couple’s two daughters had to drop out of school after facing constant harassment from her peers and often teachers. The stigma followed them wherever they went, in public places and in even in the "safe" environs of their house in Bareilly. Such has been the ordeal that Nagma now says she wants a divorce from Chand just to make sure her daughters live a normal life.
Speaking with TOI, Nagma said on Friday: “Chand used to work at a car workshop in Anantnag when he was first arrested in 2003. I along with our elder daughter then shifted to Bareilly leaving behind everything we had in Kashmir. Even though my parents forced me to start my life all over again, I always insisted on supporting Chand through thick and thin.”
Nagma added, “Since I had no money, I started living at my parents’ place. For the next few years, I was regularly summoned by police, CBI and sleuths from other departments for questioning.”
On September 25 2002, 33 people were killed and nearly a hundred injured in a terrorist attack on the Akshardham temple complex in Gandhinagar. Chand was arrested a year later for helping the two terrorists (who were later killed by NSG commandos) “by bringing them to Ahmedabad and taking them around the city”. Khan was acquitted by the apex court 11 years later of all the charges as the prosecution failed “to establish Khan’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt” and that he “deserved exoneration from all charges”. He walked free in 2014 and came to live with his family in Bareilly.
In these 11 years, the couple’s two daughters, Ikra and Yusra, had to bear the brunt of their father’s chequered past. “I somehow managed to continue with the education of elder daughter Ikra, but the younger one had to drop out of school on many occasions owing to discrimination by school authorities and other parents,” Nagma said, adding that she had hoped her husband’s release in 2014 would be the start of a "second life".
“After those excruciating years, Chand was finally acquitted and I thought we will start our life once again. He started his own business of transporting meat only to land in police net yet again. He has since been arrested twice on charges of cow slaughter,” she said, adding, "For the sake of my daughters’ future, I want to lead a separate and hopefully peaceful life now. I think that maybe a divorce would help.
He has been lodged in Pilibhit jail since June this year, but I have not met him even once. I am only worried about my daughters. I do not want them to live the rest of their lives with this stigma.”