At 12.48 pm on May 13, 2025, Abdul Wahid Shaikh stood at the threshold of academic triumph. After years of struggle, the 47-year-old school teacher was finally submitting his PhD thesis on “prison literature” at Mahatma Gandhi Mission University in Maharashtra’s Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar. A man who had spent nine years wrongfully imprisoned was now completing his doctoral work on the very subject that had defined his existence.
Then his phone rang.
The caller introduced himself as a police officer from Ghatkopar crime branch. A senior inspector wanted to meet Wahid. Could he come to the office?
When Wahid refused without formal notice, the officer made an offer that left him unsettled: “We’ll come meet you.”
It was a trigger that transported Wahid back to a nightmare that began 24 years ago and refuses to end.
“Each time the phone rings and it’s the police, I’m back in 2006,” Wahid says. “Back in the cell. Back to the torture. Back to the humiliation. Since 2001, my life has been a series of flashbacks, arrests, abuse, and prison.”
Wahid has endured what he says have been 24 years of continuous police harassment, 11 years of imprisonment across two terror cases in which he was acquitted, zero accountability for the officers who charged him, and ongoing surveillance despite the acquittals.
The system refuses to let him go.
Earlier this month, he claimed he had received another call asking about his whereabouts. In September 2024, crime branch officers had allegedly visited his home, questioning his wife about his routine and activities while he was at work. In October 2023, NIA officers allegedly broke down his door as he demanded legal warrants during pre-dawn raids part of a countrywide crackdown on the banned Popular Front of India.
Despite his acquittal, a 2019 gazette notification extending the ban on SIMI still named him as a member involved in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts. Only after filing a petition in Delhi High Court was his name removed. But he alleged the harassment continued and he wrote to the National Human Rights Commission in 2019 about it. He said he received a response only in 2022.
“They said my name was listed in the Union War Book maintained by the Anti-Terrorism Cell of the Mumbai police, and that surveillance was being carried out in the interest of national security and sovereignty,” he said. Newslaundry has previously reported on the Maharashtra police adding names to the Union War Book suspect list – a catalogue of the enemies or potential enemies of state.
But, as Wahid pointed out, “I have been acquitted by the court. I am not a suspicious person. This is my country too. And yet, I still face sudden police visits and unexpected calls. A constant fear hangs over me that they might be preparing to frame me again. I often wake up in the middle of the night, gripped by anxiety, imagining the police at my door. I’ve already lost years of my life to a crime I never committed. This harassment must end somewhere.”
A Maharashtra ATS officer told Newslaundry that despite an acquittal in a terror case, a person might remain in the Union War Book suspect list as a “preventive measure”.
Importantly, Wahid had also written to multiple entities in 2017 – the NHRC, the Mumbai police commission, the chief justice of the Bombay High Court – about the ongoing police harassment but he claimed he never received responses to any of these letters.
As a result, Wahid’s family members are prisoners in their own home. His wife lives in constant fear that any knock on the door might mean another separation. His four children, two in their late teens and two under eight years of age, have grown up watching their father flinch at phone calls and jump at unexpected visitors. His elderly mother would panic whenever police visited, terrified her son would be taken away again.
SIMI and the seeds of persecution
The nightmare began on September 27, 2001. Wahid, then a 23-year-old schoolteacher, had just stepped out of a mosque in Vikhroli’s Parksite area after evening prayers when the police arrested him.
Wahid and seven other men were accused of being members of the Students’ Islamic Movement of India, which had been banned just a day before in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States. He spent two months in jail before securing bail, but with a condition: he had to report to Parksite police station every single day.
Wahid told Newslaundry that he was neither formally charged nor informed of the specific allegations against him. Yet for the next four days, he had to report daily to the police until a chargesheet was filed in 2005. It claimed that after SIMI’s ban, Wahid planned to “disturb peace and harmony”.
When a Vikhroli court acquitted him in 2013, the judgement was unambiguous: “there is nothing to show that the accused were active members of the organisation and resorted to violence or did an act intended to create disorder or disturbance of peace by resorting to violence”. “Except the bare words of the informant, there is nothing to indicate that the accused were members of SIMI.”
If the SIMI case was a prologue, the events of July 11, 2006, became Wahid’s life sentence. That evening, coordinated bomb blasts tore through seven Mumbai local trains, killing over 180 people.
Wahid was at home in Mumbra with his wife and children when news of the blasts broke on television. He had no mobile phone at the time. He made one phone call from his landline to check on his brother Zuber, who also lived in Mumbai. According to Wahid, Zuber told him he’d received a phone call from the Parksite police station asking about Wahid.
The next day, Wahid voluntarily went to the police station. His statement was recorded, and he was allowed to leave.
On August 14, 2006, officers took Wahid from his school under the pretext of a brief inquiry. He got into their vehicle and was assaulted while being taken to the office of the DCP (Railways) near Byculla West. His assault continued at the office and he was locked up and interrogated by officers who warned him not to abscond. They also said he would be called again.
That call came on August 17. At 2 am, a dozen officers of the ATS allegedly stormed Wahid’s home and ransacked it. He was taken outside his house and allegedly beaten. He was then taken to the ATS office in Kalachowki.
During the trial, Wahid would provide a detailed testimony as well as a complaint in November on what transpired before the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act court in Mumbai.
Wahid alleged he was subjected to brutal and systematic torture by the police, involving both physical and psychological abuse, in order to force confessions. He claimed he was beaten with a flour mill belt inscribed with slogans mocking justice, had his palms and soles lashed up to 200 times using a method called naalbandi, and was forced to endure 180-degree torture that stretched his legs painfully apart while officers stood on them. He said he urinated blood, received electric shocks to his genitals, and was injected with oil into his rectum, causing unbearable burning. Torture methods allegedly included simulated drowning, prolonged exposure to dripping water, sensory overload with deafening music, and forced nudity, often in front of family. Wahid said the psychological toll was extreme, with panic, anxiety, and mental breakdowns induced by isolation and sensory assault.
Even scientific evidence was allegedly manipulated, as per the same complaint during trial. Wahid said that he was taken to Bengaluru in October 2006 for a narco analysis at the Forensic Science Laboratory, where one Dr S Malini purportedly manipulated video recordings while conducting the test.
Months later, Malini’s name resurfaced when the CBI accused the Forensic Science Laboratory in Bengaluru of tampering with narco CDs in the high-profile Sister Abhaya murder case. The Kerala High Court and a magisterial probe in Ernakulam both said the CDs were manipulated. In 2009, Malini was dismissed from FSL after allegations she had forged her educational certificates. She was later reinstated by the Karnataka High Court and the Supreme Court, which said she hadn’t been “given an opportunity to explain or counter the charges against her”. This case against her is pending trial.
The impunity network
Until his acquittal, Wahid was shuttled between the jails in Arthur Road, Byculla and Kolhapur. During this period, he studied law and began fighting his own case.
The breakthrough came through human rights lawyer Shahid Azmi, who guided Wahid’s early legal strategy. Azmi was assassinated in his Kurla office in 2010.
In 2015, the court finally acquitted Wahid, declaring the case against him baseless. The order underlined that the “prosecution has failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accused has committed an offence punishable under UAPA”. He was the only to be acquitted of all charges in the 2006 case.
But what happened to those who destroyed Wahid’s life?
No action was taken against officers, most of them from the ATS, he had named in his complaint, according to Wahid. Many were subsequently promoted.
KP Singh Raghuvanshi was named by Wahid when he was the head of the Maharashtra ATS. He went on to become ADGP and then Thane commissioner, and retired as director general of the Maharashtra State Security Corporation.
AN Roy, named by Wahid when he was Mumbai police commissioner, went on to become DGP of Maharashtra.
DCP Nawal Bajaj later became ACP of the south region and special branch; joint commissioner of police, Mumbai (administration); and inspector general (Konkan range). He’s presently the ATS chief of the state.
Additional commissioner SK Jaiswal became Mumbai police commissioner, then DGP Maharashtra. He also served as head of the Central Industrial Security Force and director of the CBI.
DCP Jaijeet Singh graduated to ATS chief, Thane police commissioner and DGP of the Anti-Corruption Bureau.
ACP Sanjay Patil’s premise was raided by the CBI in 2021 in connection with an alleged corruption case.
Others named by Wahid were ACP Kishan Singhal and several inspectors including Vasant Tajane, Arun Khanvilkar, Iqbal Hasan, Sachin Kadam and Dinesh Kadam.
Vasant Tajane retired as ACP. Arun Khanvilkar was arrested in 2010 for accepting a bribe; he was acquitted and has been accused of assaulting a cop. Sachin Kadam was promoted to senior inspector in 2024 and was with the Economic Offences Wing. Dinesh Kadam was promoted to ACP. He was part of the team investigating the murder of Narendra Dhabolkar; the team was pulled up by the CBI and high court for its shoddy work.
Importantly, in November 2006, a Mumbai police officer allegedly wrote a letter claiming that innocent people were being framed in the train blasts. One of the accused filed an RTI application seeking a copy of the letter, but the Chief Information Commission directed the President’s Secretariat to file an affidavit saying there was no record of such a letter.
As Wahid said, “The tragedy in our country is that officers who carry out botched investigations and frame innocent people walk free, untouched, unpunished. But people who are innocent and acquitted from court continue to suffer under constant surveillance and suspicion.”
KP Raghuvanshi, then the head of the ATS, was the only one to respond at the time of publishing this report. He was specifically asked about allegations that Wahid had been tortured and framed.
He replied, “If the intention of the investigating officer is bona fide and not malicious, the law offers him protection. Even if he makes a mistake in the course of his official duty, he is safeguarded, so long as his actions are not driven by malafide intent. In terrorism-related cases, accused individuals are often believed to follow extremist playbooks, which allegedly instruct them to mislead investigators, make false allegations against police, and even confess to unrelated charges to create confusion and escape conviction.”
Newslaundry reached out to Malini, the Maharashtra home department, the DGP as well as the Ghatkopar crime branch to ask about Wahid’s allegations. We also reached out to the NHRC to ask why it didn’t respond to Wahid’s complaint about police harassment. This report will be updated if they respond.
‘FIR should be against officers’
Legal experts point to fundamental structural failures and the need for accountability. As a report by the Bengaluru-based Centre for Law and Policy Research said:
“The procedural safeguard available to police officers is a hurdle while instituting criminal complaints against them. Although courts have held that sanction of the government under Section 197 and 132 of the CrPC is not required, it is often a misused provision, preventing lay-persons from registering FIRs against them. Police excesses often cause harassment and injuries but may not necessarily amount to a violation of fundamental rights.”
Senior Supreme Court lawyer Colin Gonsalves said: “Even when courts pass strictures against prosecution or clearly state police acted with malafide intent, no action is taken against investigating officers. This failure lies squarely with the judiciary. The moment a court finds a case has been fabricated, it should not only acquit the accused but also order immediate registration of an FIR against responsible officers.”
Human rights lawyer Lara Jesani identified systemic problems: “Trials drag on for years. Investigating officers file voluminous chargesheets, bail is routinely denied, and the accused spend significant portions of their lives behind bars before being acquitted. By the time they’re released, many avoid pursuing legal action against police out of fear – fear of being framed again.”
From his trauma, Wahid has created purpose. His book and his YouTube channel, both called “Begunah Qaidi”, document stories of the falsely incarcerated. And while the police calls might continue, Abdul Wahid Shaikh will keep answering.
This report was made possible by those who contributed to our ongoing investigative project on police impunity. If you liked this report, power our upcoming series on India’s e-waste underworld.
Newslaundry is a reader-supported, ad-free, independent news outlet based out of New Delhi. Support their journalism, here.
