On a cool Wednesday morning, two anxious families separated by six miles from each other, sat next to their telephones. They were waiting for a call from New Delhi which would tell the fate of their sons accused in the Parliament attack case.When the telephone rang at 11.45 at Syed Abdul Rehman Geelani’s house in Jadeed mohalla of Baramulla township, the family members of the Delhi University lecturer, heaved a collective sigh of relief. Just a few miles away in Sopore’s Dobgah, Showkat Ahmad Guru’s father, mother and two siblings were grief-stricken.At their Jadeed mohalla house, Geelani’s step-father Mufti Habibullah sat on a cot in a poorly-lit room, flanked by his son, Mufti Abdul Rahim Geelani. Visitors were pouring in to congratulate them and they were hugging everyone who came their way. ‘‘Allah has invoked his blessings in this case. My son is innocent and this has been proved now,’’ said Habibullah, 90, looking up.Across the room sat Syed Shazada, her hand kissed by every woman visitor. ‘‘From day one, we have maintained he was not guilty. And now that he is being set free, the protests that were held here and in Delhi were proved right,’’ said Mufti Rahim, the lecturer’s brother.‘‘Though we suffered immensly in the last two years, we thank Almighty for giving us the courage to bear with the pain and agony,’’ said Rahim, who heads the dar-ul-uloom (Islamic seminary) in Barmaulla.‘‘And after God, we should be grateful to the group of intellectuals and human rights activists such as Nandita Haksar, Ram Jethmalani, his lawyer, Sanjay Kak and others in Delhi, Srinagar and elsewhere who stood by us in the hour of crisis,’’ he added.When she heard about her son’s acquittal, Geelani’s mother, Syeda Shahazada raised her hands in prayers. ‘‘We have been suffering in silence for the last two years. Now we feel relieved. It is better late than never,’’ she said.Six miles away, the family of Showkat Guru was in tears. His 15-month-old son, Arsalan, was playing in the lap of his grandfather, waving at the children and women who sat in the verandah of the two-storeyed house. The family was joined by Guru’ sister, Tahira and an aunt who came from a neighbouring village. Guru’s mother Ayesha and Tahira broke down while neighbours tried to console them. ‘‘God is great. He will also be set free, Inshallah,’’ said an elderly woman.Ayesha said: ‘‘My son is innocent. He has not done anything wrong. Though he has been convicted, but we will fight it out till the end.’’However, the family took solace in the fact that their daughter-in-law, Navjot Sidhu alias Afshan Guru, was acquitted. ‘‘We are extremely happy that our bahu would be released. Now we have one mission and that is to fight the case in the Supreme court,’’ said Mohammad Yasin Guru, Showkat’s brother and a college lecturer, who added that he would not marry till he got justice for his brother from the Supreme Court. ‘‘Inshaallah, he will be set free by the Supreme Court,’’ he said.
