The Quiet Grief Of Malegaon: Seventeen Years After the Blast

In Malegaon, the air still hums with the rhythm of looms and the murmur of prayer at every corner of a lane. Nestled in Maharashtra’s Nashik district, this textile town has always known the value of silence, survival and unity. But there is one place in Malegaon where silence is sharper than usual, Bhikku Chowk. Once an ordinary junction where families and friends met, truck and bus drivers passed-by, children played, and the smell of frying vada pav mingled with the scent of namaz-drenched evenings, the chowk has become a site of eternal memory, of unfinished mourning.

Seventeen years have passed since the September 29, 2008 blast ripped through this bustling city square. Six people died, nearly a hundred were injured, and dozens of families were forever marked by grief. And now, as a special NIA court grants bail to seven of the accused, old wounds reopen like freshly cut scars for those who lost their loved ones, and the city too.

The news came down heavily last week. Babasaheb Ambedkar Bridge is an overpass that physically divides two parts of Malegaon, one predominantly Hindu, the other largely Muslim. But it also represents something deeper. Maulana Abdul Qayuum Qasmi, the Chief of Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind’s Nashik division, said: “We heard fireworks on the other side. Here, there was silence. You could feel the difference.”

Not far from Bhikku Chowk, in the narrow alleys that wind around the handloom workshops, lives Saeed Abrar. He doesn’t want to talk much. “The past,” he says, “has teeth. I don’t want to get bitten again.” Yet he pulls out a photo from his phone,  which he keeps buried. It’s his brother, Saeed Azhar. The two of them had grown up playing cricket in the empty lots near chowk. On the day of the blast, Azhar was walking back from the masjid only to never return home.

The history of Malegaon is not just one of wounds, but of weaving, literally and metaphorically. It’s a city of looms, of nights that echo with the whirring of machines, of families that have lived side by side regardless of faith. In Malegaon, unity doesn’t shout, it hums quietly through power looms, shared walls, and borrowed sugar. Here, Hindu and Muslim families have lived as neighbours for generations, their lives stitched together like the fabric the town is known for. Communal tensions may occasionally make the news, but the everyday reality is far less dramatic and far more powerful, a solidarity built not on slogans, but on small, unwavering acts of care.

Victims Families Mourn

In a modest home near Sawand Gaon Phata in Gulshanabad, 84-year-old Shaikh Abrahim Supru clutches an old newspaper cutting. His hands tremble, the paper thins with age, but the face in the photo is clear, Shaikh Rafique Shaikh Mustafa, his son-in-law. Mustafa was a truck driver. Just like a regular day, he had gone to Bhikku Chowk to grab a quick bite, like he always did before evening rounds. He never came back. “He was more than a son-in-law,” Supru whispers, eyes moist, voice cracking. “He was the support of our old age. My daughter never recovered. She cried for him until her last breath. She died a couple of years back,” says Supru with teary eyes.

Next to him, his wife, frail but composed, gently lays down another bundle of brittle clippings on the veranda table. These are not just paper; they are their archive of grief. Some are yellowing at the edges, others torn and re-taped. There are photographs of Mustafa, grainy and fading, headlines screaming of the carnage, and articles that once gave them hope that justice might come swiftly.  Their only grandson, Rehaan, once a boy who would sit on his grandfather’s lap and ask where the stars went in the morning, is now a man. He drives a private bus along the Mumbai-Nashik route, waking before the sun, returning only after dark. The family depends on his income, and the modest earnings from a small general store they run out of the front room of their home. It's a narrow space lined with biscuit tins, cold drink crates, and paan packets,  humble, yet dignified. Supru says that every evening, the store becomes a gathering spot. Children from the neighborhood come running, some to buy sweets, others to simply sit on the steps and chatter about school, cricket, and dreams too young to know heartbreak. Their laughter echoes through the courtyard, a momentary balm for the house's lingering sorrow. Sometimes, Rehaan joins them for a few minutes before dinner, smiling despite the weight on his shoulders. “But nights,” Supru says, lowering his gaze, “nights are different. Lonely, dark, and with oneself”

When the shutters come down and the children go home, when the fan whirs in the stillness and the azaan fades into silence, the grief creeps in. The walls of the house seem to speak, through old photographs on the shelf, the empty cot where Mustafa once rested during visits, the half-torn prayer rug no one has moved in years. “At night, the house remembers,” Supru murmurs. “It remembers his footsteps, the sound of his laugh, the smell of his clothes. That’s when it speaks. And it only speaks of absence.” The couple often sat together in those hours, side by side, hands clasped like a prayer. They don't always talk. Sometimes, they simply exist together in the company of their memories. Because here, in this home, grief has made itself a quiet, permanent resident, never screaming, never forgetting.

Maulana Qasmi has lived through more than one tragedy here. He sits in his office beside a masjid, surrounded by stacks of legal paperwork and photos of community gatherings. “The city saw two major blasts within two years. In 2006, then 2008. Still, not one communal riot,” he says. “We are a city of labourers, of god-fearing people. We work hard. We don’t want hate.” Qasmi remembers the 2008 blast with clarity most would try to forget. “It was a Monday. The area was full. Namaz had just ended. Children were out. People were getting vada pav and tea. And then” he stops. “And then it all turned black.”

Among the six killed was a ten-year-old girl. “She had come to buy vada pav,” Qasmi says. “She had saved a rupee coin from her school tiffin. That was her last act of joy. Imagine telling her mother she won’t come back. Tell me what bail means in that language.”

After the blast, there were arrests, charges, and a promise of closure. But like many terror-related trials in India, the case saw delays, transfers, and changing narratives. The initial investigation pointed fingers in one direction; later, it veered towards alleged right-wing involvement. In 2016, the NIA dropped charges against Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, Purohit, Ramesh Upadhyay, Sameer Kulkarni, Ajay Rahirkar, Sudhakar Dwivedi and Sudhakar Chaturved under MCOCA. “The victims were promised a compensation of Rs five lakh,” Qasmi says. “It was a fight just to get that. And what is Rs five lakh for a life? For a child? For a father or a brother?”

A Place Of Memory

Even after 17 years, Bhikku Chowk is never just a square. There are chai stalls where people often gather, sometimes in silence, sometimes in quiet remembrance. A rusted plaque with the names of the dead stands at one corner. Children still play, because life insists on returning. But everyone who lives nearby knows what happened here. Some evenings, Supru walks by, leaning on his cane, sometimes with Rehaan by his side. He doesn’t stop, but he looks. “I want justice before I die,” he says. “Not just for me, for Mustafa, for the girl, for the others. If this city forgets, who will remember?”

There is something fiercely loyal in the way Malegaon remembers. It doesn’t riot. It doesn’t burn. It endures. It continues to stitch cloth and live together. In the face of sorrow, its people open shops at dawn, walk their children to school, offer evening prayers, and greet neighbors across faiths. The Hindu Muslim unity that has withstood the pain of two bombings continues to hold, frayed but unbroken. “We have seen evil,” says Qasmi. “But we have not become it.” Even today Bhikku Chowk hosts evening tea sessions and regular get–together post evening namaaz. Seventeen years is a long time to wait for justice. But in Malegaon, time moves differently. It spins like a loom, in circles of hope and heartbreak. And somewhere in that cycle, the people still wait. Quietly. Lovingly.