Neighbours found him soft guy with no vices

“He was a skilled craftsman and had come to me for work in 2007. After working for over two months,he took another house of mine on rent and started his own workshop,” he says,adding,“Later,when we took our house back for personal use,he shifted to another house in the vicinity.”

For Faisal,who is an artisan and works in the same locality,Hamid appeared to be a “soft guy”. “He was very empathetic towards the neighbours,” says Faisal. Claiming that they have not seen Hamid alias Salim since September 2009,Faisal says,a tiff with one Shakeel forced him to leave the area.

“Shakeel is a relative of the area corporator Sageer Ahmed and had been bullying the neighbours. One day,when Salim resisted,he was beaten black and blue,and the local police was also informed. Since then,we have no information about him,” says Tahir,who had also rented his room to him.

The neighbours say though they were worried and surprised over Salim’s ‘elopement’ just before Eid,they could have never imagined that he was wanted in a train blast case.

“He was a simple next-door man who was hard working and completely engrossed in his routine life,” Ramman Mian remembers about Salim with whom he used to go for namaz on a routine basis.

Back in his home at Nakhas area,Salim is Hamiduddin,who as a 17-year-old boy went to Saudi Arabia to work as a ‘zardozi karigar’ on January 8,1994 — few days after he allegedly planted bombs in the two Rajdhani Express trains near Kanpur.

“The eldest of seven siblings,it was his sense of responsibility that took him to the Gulf so that he could see his four sisters married off and family settled,” says his brother Naseeruddin claiming that he was the family’s ideal man.

“I consume gutkha,but you would have never seen him involved in any activity that could bring disrepute,” he adds.

“A week after he left,policemen came to us claiming he is wanted in train blasts. We were broken and insisted that he is innocent and is in Saudi Arabia earning bread and butter for the family,” says his father Zamil-uddin,a cook.

“Since then,though policemen have been coming on a regular basis,my boy or his news never came to us,” says his mother Shahjahen.

Claiming that she had a last conversation with Hamid in February 1994,when he called from Saudi Arab to say that he is innocent but was extremely terrified of facing the police.

Since then,Shahjahen says,she has been waiting for the son to come home and get clean of all the charges levelled against him. “Though I have never met him,neighbours and family say,he was a gem of a person who had been framed,” says Afsar,an ICICI bank employee and husband of his only married sister.