Karuna Waghela and her son Niraj
HANG HIM IN public. We want to kill him ourselves. He ruined my life, and the lives of my children.” Karuna Waghela's quest for justice has not abated a bit. She and the youngest of her three children, Niraj, have been on medication for “anxiety and shock” ever since her husband, Thakur Waghela, was killed by Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab on November 26, 2008 in Mumbai. “We ask the government to give my children the opportunity to avenge their father's death. That alone will give us peace,” she says.
Many of those who lost their loved ones in the 26/11 attacks want justice, and are hopeful that it will be served with Rana's extradition and trial in India. But others simply want to move on, saying justice delayed is justice denied. Niraj was just one year old when Kasab gunned down his father at the doorstep of their house, a hutment off the main road leading to GT Hospital. Waghela was having dinner when Kasab came over asking for water. He got up and gave him water, and was shot at point blank. “Ever since I wanted to own a gun so that I could shoot down my father's killer. But of course, then I grew up,” says Niraj.
Before he shot Waghela, Kasab had fired several rounds at Bhaagan Shinde a few metres away. Shinde was talking on the phone to his wife Sunanda, who was in a train with their daughter, when he was shot. “Don't come here, something has happened. Stay where you are,” he told her. Those were his last words.
Sunanda Shinde
Sunanda, now 59, works as support staff at GT Hospital and lives in Pratiksha Nagar with her son Ashish, who is now 21. “I will never forget the moment,” he says. “It is a vacuum which will never be filled. We are distraught because we cannot take the law in our hands and to believe in the justice system is to fool ourselves. They ruined our families. After killing my father, Kasab killed three top policemen. Everybody around us had lost someone in the firing and all of us continue to be hopeless. Had my father been around, I'm sure we would have been in better shape. This money and house, nothing matters. I want to see Rana suffer exactly the way we did.”
His voice finds an echo in Sushila Ughade's son, who lost his father, Baban, in the attacks. He prefers not to be identified because he has taken his father's job as a security guard at a government hospital. “It was his night duty on that godforsaken day,” says Sushila. “He left for duty after dinner and in ten minutes we received the news that there was firing at CST station. Around 4.30am, we were told that he was killed. We waited for long to get Kasab hanged. If it takes long to see this one punished too, then there is no point to the whole exercise.”
The children of the victims of 26/11 are hopeful that Rana will be punished. “Already there has been such a delay in bringing him here,” says Sushila's son, who was 10 at the time of the attack. The memory of his “blood-soaked father” is still fresh in his mind, but the “thirst for justice has dried up”, he says.