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A terrorist’s bullet, not cancer, killed him

— Photo: BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

Sheikh Ayub and Razia at the Gateway of India in 2005.

WARDHA: In the end it was not cancer which killed Sheikh Ayub Sheikh Yakub but a terrorist’s bullet to his head. His wife Razia and 12-year-old son Arif had accompanied him to Mumbai for a routine check-up at the Tata Memorial Hospital on November 24.

Forty-one- year old Razia and her family were waiting like hundreds of other travellers in the big hall at Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus ( CST) on November 26. They were to catch the Vidarbha Express the next day. Far away from the tumultuous events of that night, Razia sits in her small house at Qureishi Mohalla in Wardha near Nagpur. Wrapped up in a checked shawl, her eyes are far away. “He used to work at Ajni in Nagpur as a fitter with the Central Railway. He was operated for cancer of the teeth three years ago and was on the road to recovery. We’ve been going every six months for a check-up to Mumbai,” she says.

“It was around 9.30 p.m., we were preparing to sleep. I was about to lie down with the blanket over my face when the firing started. The bullets went through my right arm and back,” Razia recalls. “I remember nothing after that. I think my husband held my hand and tried to get me out of the station,” she said. She remembers that the armed gunmen were firing all over the place.

“They had no fixed target,” she remarks. “We heard sounds of firing from the other end and suddenly things happened. I think I was taken to Cama Hospital and then to J.J. Hospital. I was operated there to remove bullets in my arm and stomach,” she said.

Even now she has to go every alternate day to the railway hospital at Nagpur to change her dressing.

While Ayub was dragging his wife and son out, he was fatally hit by a bullet on the head, says a relative. It was left to young Arif to identify his father’s body from the pile at the morgue.

Forty-seven-year old Ayub worked in the Railway for 30 years. He was the eldest of four siblings. His mother Jinnatbi who can’t see clearly fishes for Ayub’s photograph in an old metal trunk. “He had cancer of the teeth. It was a routine check-up he went for. He was getting better,” she mutters.

Jinnatbi is proud that her husband used to work in the Railways as a headload carrier. “Then my son Ayub got a job and now my grandson will also get one,” she beams. However, Razia is in no hurry for her only son to work. “He is too young to work now. I want to change his school first,” she says. In the mohalla she is surrounded by her relatives and friends and it is the community support that is keeping her going.

She was married 25 years ago to Ayub and Arif is her only child. An old identity card shows her husband as a class one helper then. “He got a job two years before our marriage,” she says shyly. Razia sits in the sunlit courtyard of her house. In front of her, her sister-in-law and nieces make chapattis on a gas stove on the ground, while Jinnatbi cleans fenugreek leaves. Razia’s face lights up as she remembers her long marriage. “I got him married as soon as he got a job,” chuckles Jinnatbi.

The entire mohalla turned out for Ayub’s funeral. He was one of the few who had a regular government job. Neighbours remember him as a kind man. His sister Naseem Bano is still dealing with the shock.

The only keepsake that Razia has is a photograph with her husband which is ironically outside the Gateway of India in Mumbai. “It was the first time I went to Mumbai and we took it outside the Gateway,” she grins.