Kamal Ahmed Ansari, one of the Muslim men implicated in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts who had earlier been convicted by a special MCOCA court along with 11 others, with five, including him, sentenced to death, received a posthumous honour after being acquitted in the case, as family members, activists, and community leaders gathered at his grave.
They stood by his grave and read aloud the Bombay High Court judgment that finally cleared his name, and the moment was marked by both relief and grief as his innocence was legally recognised, but his life had already been lost.
The 2006 Mumbai train blasts, which killed more than 180 people, led to one of the most high-profile terror trials in Maharashtra, and in 2015, a special MCOCA court convicted 12 men, sentencing five of them, including Ansari, to death.
On 21 July 2025, the Bombay High Court overturned all the convictions and acquitted the men, citing unreliable evidence, doubtful witness identification, and flawed confessions, but Ansari had already died in Nagpur Central Jail in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ansari, a daily-wage worker from Madhubani in Bihar, ran a small chicken shop and sold vegetables to support his wife and five children, and his life was upended when the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad arrested him in 2006, branding him a terrorist.
He spent 16 years in prison awaiting justice, and his family lived under the shadow of stigma, isolation, and economic hardship while he maintained his innocence from behind bars. His death came before the verdict that exonerated him, turning the court’s eventual recognition of wrongful conviction into what many described as a hollow victory.
The gathering at his grave was led by activists, including members of the Innocence Network of India and leaders of local organisations, and it was attended by his younger brother Jamal Ahmed, along with friends and associates who had campaigned for his acquittal.
They read out the High Court judgment that absolved him of all charges, and the act was described as a symbolic affirmation of what he had always maintained during his years of incarceration.
Participants at the memorial emphasised that Ansari’s case was not an isolated one but reflected a broader pattern in which marginalised communities, particularly Muslims, are disproportionately targeted under anti-terror laws. They argued that the criminal justice system repeatedly fails the poor and vulnerable, weaponising laws that leave innocent people languishing in prisons, sometimes for decades, and in cases like Ansari’s, denying them the chance to live to see their acquittal.
The Innocence Network, which has worked for the release of men wrongfully convicted in the blasts case, vowed to continue documenting instances of miscarriage of justice, and the gathering concluded with calls for accountability and systemic reform. Ansari’s grave was described as a stark reminder of the cost of wrongful incarceration, standing as testimony to the human toll of flawed investigations and delayed justice.