Terror Is JustA Regular Face

Tauqeer’s name first blipped on the ATS radar after the July 2006 Mumbai train blasts. Some of the accused revealed that he had attended meetings with them in Ujjain before the serial explosions. The ATS, claims advocate Mubin Solkar who is now advising the family, stormed into his Mira Road house and confronted his family members, causing much trauma. "Tauqeer was not shown as an accused in that case, yet this happened," says Solkar. "He hasn’t come home since."

His name reappeared in April this year when SIMI general secretary Safdar Nagori and his accomplices were nabbed in Madhya Pradesh. Nagori told interrogators that he had met Tauqeer at a religious meet in Delhi in 2000, and that the latter had attended a two-day simi meeting in Karnataka two years back, and in Kerala in October 2007. Investigators believe that if they get Tauqeer, they will have their man, but the evidence against him is largely circumstantial or based on the confessional statements of others.

The 36-year-old Tauqeer grew up in south Mumbai’s Muslim basti of Dongri. After schooling there, he acquired an engineering diploma from a Navi Mumbai college and then did a certificate course in computer programming. He then worked for a direct sales agent of a reputed IT company and later joined a data firm. Even when he married in 1997, his first love was simi, say family members. He has three children, the youngest under three years of age. His sobbing mother Zubaida told the media: "Till the time he was with us, he was a clean man...but if found guilty in court he should be hanged in public so that we don’t suffer anymore."

"Suffering" is a recurring theme in Mira Road’s Naya Nagar, a large complex of mainly Muslim middle- and upper-middle class families. Residents have had to suffer barbs and ignominy after a series of arrests for local crimes but particularly after three of the July train blasts suspects were found to have lived here. Tauqeer’s association has made locals, particularly the clergy, take proactive steps to "keep an eye on suspicious characters" around the complex.