Even as two Indians were accused in a Spanish court of cooperating with terrorists, their family, fiercely proud of them, struggled to come to terms with the incredibility of it all.It is a family with strong links to the BJP. The thought that Suresh Kumar, 31, and his brother-in-law Vinay Kohly, 26, would have willingly helped the Al-Qaeda kill 202 people in the Madrid train bombing is more than they can swallow.But the court will need more convincing. After Suresh and Vinay had spent seven hours before a judge, along with the three Moroccans accused of masterminding the bombings, they were remanded to custody.According to Reuters, this suggests they have a case to answer. An unexploded bomb found near the scene of the March 11 bombings and a mobile phone that was allegedly used to trigger off the device is being cited as evidence.The phone was said to have been purchased from an electronic store run by the Indians. It is one of the four or five electronics and grocery stores that Suresh Kumar runs in Madrid and his family in Punjab basks in his success. After finishing his high school 11 years ago, Suresh, the son of a newspaper hawker, made his way to Europe and worked as a daily wager. Eventually, he managed to open an electronics store in Madrid and then multiplied his success by opening several more.‘‘Now he holds a green card and owns a house in Lava Pais, a downtown area in Madrid,’’ said his father Shyam Sunder. On hearing of the blasts last week, Shyam Sunder had called up his son to make sure all was well — only to learn that he was in trouble.Suresh, who had invited his wife’s brother Vinay to join him in Madrid three years ago, has apparently been the model son with flashes of his affluence evident in his family’s Hoshiarpur home. Last year, he had invited the family to join him for a celebration in Madrid after his wife Anu gave birth to a daughter. Her own family had not even heard of the blasts until a policeman visited them a couple of days ago to tell them that their son Vinay had been arrested.After trying to reassure themselves that it was all a horrible misunderstanding and that the storm would blow over, the families now wait helplessly. Their pride in their high-flyer sons has been replaced by a silent prayer.
