Adv Shahid Azmi had received threats, yet not given any security

By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net,

New Delhi: Both Ajmal Amir Kasab and Fahim Ansari are accused in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks case. Kasab’s lawyer K P Pawar has Z-category security while Ansari’s lawyer Shahid Azmi was not given any security. Adv Shahid Azmi was shot dead yesterday evening by some unidentified men in his office in Taximen’s Colony, Kurla (West), Mumbai. He was receiving threats for few years but the government did not give him any security.

Azmi was defence counsel for three accused in the 7/11 serial train bombings in Mumbai in 2006. He had challenged application of MCOCA in that case in the Supreme Court. The case is pending with the apex court. Besides, Adv Azmi had defended some of the September 2006 Malegaon blast case accused on behalf of Jamiat Ulema Maharashtra.

As early as in 2006 he had approached the police about threats he was receiving. But he was not provided any cover. Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Deven Bharti has been quoted as saying, “We are probing all possible angles. It is true that he had received threats some years back.”

Jamiat Ulema Maharashtra General Secretary Gulzar Qasmi has described Adv Azmi’s death as great loss to the Muslim community. “His death is a huge loss for those innocent Muslim youths whose cases he was seeing. When youth of the Muslim community are being picked from here and there in the name of terrorism, his death is a great loss to the Muslim community,” Qasmi said.

After the murder of Shahid Azmi, who was also defending 26/11 accused Fahim Ansari, Ansari’s wife has expressed apprehension about the fate of the case. Ansari’s wife Yasmin has said she feared for her husband’s defence now. She has been quoted as saying: “I don’t understand why this happened. He was supposed to argue my husband’s case. It was essential that he should have been there.”

32-year-old Shahid was only 15 in 1992 when, soon after the demolition of Babri Masjid and the riots that followed, he was arrested under Terrorism and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA). He was accused of conspiring to assassinate Bal Thackeray. He was convicted in 1999 with five years imprisonment by the TADA court. But the Supreme Court acquitted him of all charges the same year.

Remembering Adv Shahid Azmi, journalist Nikhil Dixit, who knew him from his journalism school days, says in a story in DNA: Shahid Azmi often joked that he would be felled by bullets. And death, ironically, came exactly the way he had predicted — while sitting in the same chair where he often laughed off his premonition. He would shrug, saying, "I've died a hundred times and if death did come knocking, I would look it in the eye."

Nikhil further writes about Azmi: A fearless lawyer, he refused to erase his past. For, it was instrumental in shaping his life, step by step. Scarred by his past, he decided to join the system to beat the system and reform it in his own capacity. One of the few lawyers who could empathise with the accused, particularly, those labelled "anti-nationals", the soft-spoken Shahid was often reluctant to charge legal fees. "They were all victims of the system," he often reasoned.

Before opting for law Shahid Azmi had done a journalism course in 1999.

Nikhil says: The first time I saw Shahid was when he entered a journalism class in 1999. The replies of the shy Shahid would often be in monosyllables, sometimes stammered. But the anger never left him. And neither did his past. Naturally, he was anti-establishment and could not stomach anybody praising the system. Slowly, we got chatting in the canteen and bonded over books. Soon after college, we got our first jobs together. Eventually, he decided to pursue law, while I continued with journalism. And life moved on.”