He said don’t worry, I will come out: Yakub’s wife

When Zubeida, 20, met her father in the Nagpur Central Jail earlier this week, he told her to pursue an MBA degree from a good college.

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“He told us not to worry and that he would come out (of jail),” his wife Rahin told The Sunday Express about the meeting that lasted 40 minutes. “He said he has faith in the Indian judiciary. He told Zubeida to study hard and make him proud.”

Rahin said Yakub had said more or less the same things in 1994, when he asked his family to return to India so they could live together, and told them that he was innocent.

Maintaining that she has faith in her husband’s innocence, Rahin said, “We were all in Dubai after the blasts. He had asked us to have confidence in the law. He himself surrendered and was brought to India from Nepal. After he asked us to come, my daughter and I, along with his parents, brothers and their wives returned.”

Speaking to mediapersons on Saturday afternoon, Rahin and Zubeida faced a string of queries on how the family is coping. Repeatedly dabbing their eyes, the women spoke for hours before Zubeida broke down. “Rahin cried 30 times in the seven hours,” said advocate Shyam Keswani, at whose house the Memon family met the media. While the family continued to say they had faith in the judiciary, Keswani, who represented the Memons during the initial trial, said the CBI “backstabbed” them. According to Keswani, CBI officers had promised not to oppose bail for Yakub as he had provided crucial evidence on the conspiracy and execution of the crime to investigators.

“But in the court hearing, the prosecution took a U-turn. They opposed Yakub’s bail. We were shocked,” said Keswani.

Keswani also said he wished that B Raman, who headed the Pakistan desk of the the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) then, had come out earlier to save Yakub from the death sentence. “The prosecuting authority must be aware of Raman’s view. Raman had clearly stated that Yakub should not be hanged. The prosecution purposely suppressed it,” said Keswani. The family said Yakub spends his time in jail reading. He recently completed his MA in English literature. “Give him a kindergarten book or a novel, he reads everything. He has a lot of books now in jail,” said Usman Memon, his cousin.

Usman said the family would have preferred to stay away from the cameras, but agreed to speak for Yakub’s sake. “Pray for us. We will celebrate Eid if Yakub returns,” he added.

tabassum.barnagarwala@expressindia.com