7/11 Verdict: He told me he should be able to get them acquitted, says slain lawyer’s brother

Elaborating, Khalid said, “My brother and other defence lawyers had worked hard on the case. He would tell me that the way things were going, he should be able to get them acquitted. Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to fight the case.” Till the time Shahid fought the case, he had filed a series of applications before the special judge, including one that challenged the application of Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA) in the case.

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“When he was killed, even the charges in the case had not been framed,” he added.

Advocate Shahid Nadeem of Jamiat Ulama-E-Maharashtra, which has been providing legal help to the accused, also said that the murder of Shahid was a big setback to the case. “Shahid was the one around whom the entire defence case revolved. He would take important decisions like the choice of senior counsels who should be called in to argue specific legal points. After his death, there was a gap in the defence strategy,” Nadeem said.

He added, “Also since Shahid had been murdered, lawyers were hesitant to represent the accused, fearing that they might suffer the same fate as him. The fact that the government was not willing to provide security further added to the fear. All these factors definitely had an impact on the case.”

Filmmaker Hansal Mehta, who directed the film Shahid that was based on the life of Shahid Azmi, said while researching for the movie, he felt that what set Azmi apart from the other lawyers, who fought similar cases, was the conviction that came from his personal experience with injustice. Azmi spent five years in Tihar jail on the charge of conspiring to kill a political leader, only to be subsequently acquitted by the Supreme Court in 2001. During his stay in prison, he had educated himself, and after being released, he pursued law and represented terror accused in several cases. “In his office, he had a note pinned to the table that read – ‘By showing me injustice, he taught me to love justice’ – a quote by an American criminal lawyer Roy Black. Hence, he was a champion for people who could not afford defence. It was not money, but a passion that guided him, something that made him so good at his work as a lawyer,” Mehta said.