Three Kashmiri men arrested in the prime of their youth as "terrorists" but acquitted after 23 years in jail are now trying to come to terms with life outside prison here.
First arrested by the Delhi police from Nepal for their alleged roles in the 1996 bomb blast in the Lajpat Nagar market and then charged by the Rajasthan police with "bombing" of a state roadways bus at Samleti in Dausa a day later, Mohammad Ali Bhat, Lateef Ahmad Waza and Mirza Nissar Hussain returned home early this week after a Jaipur bench of the Rajasthan High Court finally acquitted them.
Ironically, the three had been acquitted in the Lajpat Nagar bomb blast case by the Delhi High Court way back in November 2012, but had to stay put in the jail, awaiting the outcome of their appeals from the Rajasthan High Court since 2014.
As exuberant youths in their mid-twenties, the three had left the valley for Nepal to sell Kashmiri handicrafts with a common goal of making a future for themselves.
But they have been left sharing a destiny more intricately, first enduring the 23-year-long incarceration till a "delayed justice" freed them early this week, and now they have been left picking up pieces of their lives together.
"We were picked up by police from Kahtmandu where we had been doing business of selling Kashmiri handicrafts," the trio said in unison.
"We all were innocent ... How could anyone carry out bomb blast in Delhi or Rajasthan while one was in Nepal? But the way we were tortured... Made to sign blank papers, it was clear we were being made scapegoats," said Waza, hailing from Khanqah area of the city, who reached home early this week.
As the city's Hassanabad locality native Bhat reached home, he had virtually no one to welcome him back. He had lost both his parents in the 23-year-long span that he spent in jails in Delhi and Rajasthan.