Nagpur: Family members and activists gathered at Jaripatka Qabrastan in Nagpur on Sunday to honor the posthumous acquittal of Kamal Ahmed Vakil Ahmed Ansari, one of the men falsely convicted in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts. Ansari died in 2021, four years before the Bombay High Court overturned his conviction along with those of 11 other men.
On July 21, 2025, the High Court dismissed the earlier verdicts delivered by a special MCOCA court in 2015, citing unreliable evidence, flawed witness identification, and coerced confessions. Five of the accused, including Ansari, had been sentenced to death.
At the cemetery, Ansari’s younger brother Jamal Ahmed, along with members of the Innocence Network and Jamiat-e-Ulema Nagpur, read aloud paragraph 1486 of the High Court judgment at his grave. The event was both symbolic and painful, acknowledging Ansari’s innocence while reminding the gathering of a justice delayed until after his death.
Kamal Ahmed was a daily-wage worker from Madhubani, Bihar, raising five children while running a small chicken shop and selling vegetables. His arrest by the Maharashtra Anti-Terrorism Squad in 2006 devastated his family, who endured poverty and stigma throughout his 16-year incarceration. He died in Nagpur Central Jail during the COVID-19 pandemic, never hearing his name cleared.
Speakers at the gathering called for accountability and reforms to prevent such miscarriages of justice. The Innocence Network pledged to continue documenting wrongful convictions and pressing for systemic change, describing Ansari’s case as part of a larger pattern of marginalized communities being unfairly targeted under terror laws.
