Murder of Muslim Lawyer Angers Community
Posted on March 18, 2010, by Hanna Ingber Win, under Crime, India, International, Religion.
MUMBAI, India — When Shahid Azmi was 15, police gathered outside his home in a slum area of Mumbai. As he, his brothers and mother huddled inside between the bed and cupboards, his older brother Arif recalls, police stoned the home and fired shots over the windows.
Shahid had a front-row view of Mumbai’s 1993 riots in which mobs of Hindus burned down homes, destroyed businesses and killed hundreds of Muslims as police looked on. His brother said Shahid also saw officers storm a Muslim home in their Shivaji Nagar community, drag women out of the apartment and try to rape them in the street. He witnessed an officer tell a Muslim neighbor to run, only to get shot by another cop.
Another brother, Khalid, recounts Shahid’s life as he sits in Shahid’s former office in Mumbai’s middle-class suburb of Kurla. Shahid had become a lawyer, representing Muslim Indians he considered wrongly accused of terrorist charges.
Last month, three armed gunmen entered this office and shot Shahid dead at point-blank range. He was 32.
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