A grateful neighbour, and the riots that changed everything

Memon and Mehta had the tiniest shop on the block — No. 10.

[related-post]

Pinto’s wife and Tiger Memon also knew each other, having been classmates at Burhani College of Arts and Commerce.

While investigating agencies have said that Tejarat International also exported meat, Pinto says he never saw a meat transaction there.

Things in the peaceful block changed after December 1992 and January 1993, when mobs took to the streets in Mumbai, and theirs was among the areas to be hit.

“I don’t know how they got to know that Tejarat was run by a Muslim. They did not target any of the other big shops run by Muslims nearby,” says Pinto, now 58, and the proprietor of a funeral director, embalming and hearse service, seated in a dark recess of his Mahim office.

Pinto recalls chasing away the mobs twice himself. “There was a gas cylinder inside the shop. Had the mob set fire to the shop, the whole building would have been destroyed,” Pinto says. Besides, “I pointed out that the shop was partly owned by a Hindu.”

However, the third time, the rioters were successful. Pinto had gone to his home, located above his office, for lunch. Residents, who managed to switch off the gas connection, helped salvage the electronic goods.

Memon couldn’t summon the courage to come for 10 days to see the damage, Pinto remembers. “He was upset. He didn’t know why they had done this.”

Among the papers Mehta and Memon later recovered were income tax documents of clients. It was to carry these home, more than a kilometre away, that Memon turned to Pinto for help.

He asked Pinto if he had boxes to spare. All Pinto had at the time were two unused coffins.

“I had got them from Bahrain. I used to rent out the acrylic coffins to ferry bodies from one state to the other. By the time I gave them to Yakub, the white of the coffins had turned brown,” Pinto still remembers.

He watched Memon loading the coffins onto a handcart, and didn’t hear about them for two months.

Then, when he least expected it, Memon called up Pinto and said he could take the coffins back. It was three days before the serial blasts. Pinto sent two men to Al-Hussaini building where the Memons lived for the coffins.

Farhana Shah, who represented some of the accused in the 1993 blasts case, remembers Yakub as a polite man and a voracious reader, particularly of history. “He often said, ‘I can’t sleep at night till I read’. He read everywhere. Be it in the courtroom, at the Arthur Road jail or by the dim light of his jail barracks.”

Shyam Keswani, who represented Yakub initially before Majid Memon took over, says he would keep himself abreast of news. “He even knew which official was now heading which particular agency.”

Yakub had also gone over the nearly 10,000-page chargesheet minutely, Keswani adds. “He knew the case like the back of his hand. He would often advise lawyers what course of action to take.”

Yakub also persisted with his studies behind bars, first at Yerwada Jail and then at Nagpur Central Prison, where he is imprisoned now. He did a masters in English literature and in political science. He is also known to have helped some inmates prepare for their exams. “When some of them later come to know he was involved in the 1993 blasts, they were shocked,” Keswani says.

Shah remembers him never losing his cool during the trial, except once. “The court of Special TADA Judge J N Patel had rejected the bail plea of his wife. He thundered at the judge ‘Bohot zyaadti ho rahi hai, judge sahab (Too many excesses are being committed)’.”

Repeating the charge that the government had gone back on an “agreement” with Yakub, Keswani says this was evident from “the first day”, “when the CBI, after asking me to apply for bail for him, opposed it tooth and nail in court and ensured he was not released”.

He adds, “A CBI officer told me that the kind of information they had got from Yakub about Pakistan even the intelligence agencies had not managed over the years, and hence they would not oppose his bail plea.”

Advocate Rizwan Merchant, who once appeared for Tiger Memon in a Customs case, echoes what many have been saying — that Yakub is paying for his brother’s actions. “He is an intelligent man with a short-tempered brother,” Merchant says.

The defence lawyer remembers a time before the blasts when there was no communal tension in Mahim. “It ruined everything. Many were detained and suspected. The immediate reaction was everybody shifted houses,” Merchant says.

A close friend of the Memons slams the “zulm (injustice)” being done to Yakub after he had helped the government.

“He was the only person in the family who was educated and academically inclined. The family is finding it hard to see their brightest son being sent to the gallows,” the friend says.

Calling Yakub “decent”, “polished”, “refined” and “knowledgeable”, Pinto talks about their few interactions outside the office block. Including the time Yakub was the first guest at his home on Christmas. “He liked this fig sweet very much.”

Yakub also invited Pinto to his wedding, though he couldn’t attend due to a prior engagement. “He was very upset,” Pinto says.

It was an afternoon, some time after the 1993 serial blasts, when Pinto’s wife was at a school where the family plied buses, that she first head the Memons could be linked to the attack.

Till a long time, says Pinto, they kept telling themselves it couldn’t be the Yakub Memon they knew.

A police search through Al-Hussaini’s building and its garage later made Pinto realise what a close shave he had had.

His coffins had been lying in the same garage. “At least he had the presence of mind to make sure I didn’t get stuck.

It saved me,” Pinto believes.

Hoping Yakub won’t be hanged, he says, “No human can take the life of another.”

Pinto disposed of the coffins long back. “I broke them and gave away one piece every day,” he says.

No sign remains of Tejarat International where the shop once stood. The guard at an ATM at No. 11, P M Patil, says, “I once peeped inside. It was so filthy, I almost threw up.”

Curated For You

‘Not acceptable’: Devendra Fadnavis orders immediate exit as BJP ties up with Congress, AIMIM

India vs South Africa U19 3rd ODI: IND beat SA by 233 runs to win 3-0 in Benoni

US Strikes Venezuela News LIVE Updates: Russia draws red line after US seizes Venezuela-linked oil tanker, says ‘no state has right to use force’