‘OURS IS A HORRIBLE LIFE’
Abdul Wahab Khan, 46, Mumbai Represented suspects in the 2003 Zaveri Bazar blasts case and 26/11 terror siege, 2008
“Being a defence lawyer is horrible,” says Khan, who has been practising since 1998.
After five years of handling cases of robbery and murder, he took up his first terror-related case after the Zaveri Bazar blasts, where two bombs concealed in taxis exploded in the Mumbai market, killing 50 and wounding 129.
The threats began almost immediately, anonymous calls telling him to back off.
“It’s frightening,” Khan says. “I worked with advocate Shahid Azmi for years, and he would talk about the death threats he got for representing people accused in cases like the serial train blasts of 2006, and he was finally murdered in 2010.”
Pressure comes in indirect ways too. “Recently, a client was sent a message in jail, through another under-trial, that he should not take me on as his advocate because I would intentionally lose the case. That hurt,” he says.
Fighting these cases has consumed his life. “I am cross-questioning three or four witnesses every day, which more or less takes up all my time,” he says. His earnings have been affected.
“To defend a man who is pitted against the sentiments of most of society and the system, one has to give it one’s all,” Khan says. “In cases like this, you are fighting for a man virtually on his deathbed.”
This leaves little time for a personal life. “Over the past two years, I have started to make some changes,” he says. “I now go on a vacation with my family every year.”
The threats have more or less ceased to matter. “I’m more concerned with finding out why someone is willing to lie on the stand, and how to break him,” Khan says.