‘I returned home to see my family members lying in a pool of blood’

Samina Sheikh and her family was assaulted to stop her and her sister from further studies.

On May 11, Mohammed Ali Ansari, 30, allegedly assaulted a family and tore the clothes of Samina Sheikh, when her family had turned a deaf ear to his threats.

 After Samina and her sister completed their matriculation in 2003, Ansari had threatened her father to stop her and her younger sister Zarina, 18, an SYBCom student from pursuing further studies.

Even after complaints were registered against Ansari the Nagpada Police failed to take any action against him. Samina and Zarina were forced to move the Bombay High Court. Shocked by such an instance in a ‘progressive state’ like Maharashtra, the court asked the Senior Police Inspector of the Nagpada Police Station to be present at the next hearing on June 18.

At 19, Samina experienced enough agony and humiliation in return for her dream of having a Masters of Science (MSc) degree. However, her spirit is still unrelenting.

On May 11, under the pretext of a quarrel that started among their children, Ansari allegedly entered the Sheikh’s house and assaulted her father Yasin Ali, mother Hasina Banu and elder brother, Azeem with a cricket bat. They had injuries on the head. Her father had to get 15 stitches in the centre of his head. Zarina’s voice still quivers as she recalls that day, “I returned home to see my father, brother, mother and sister lying unconscious in a pool of blood. I called for help and rushed them to Nair Hospital.”

However, she says that by the time she got back after sending her parents to the hospital, Ansari’s mother and sister had cleaned and washed away the blood from their house. The court has also asked Ansari’s mother and sisters to be made a party in the petition.

The neighbours say that Ansari claimed to be a police informer.  “He says that he has paid hit men to kill us and we should withdraw the case against him. He told us that Nagpada Police Station is in his pocket,” Samina said. Ansari’s father, Nisar Ahmed however said that this was a ploy against his son. It was a fight between the kids and his son was being falsely implicated. “He’s now in Pune as conditions are not good for him to be in Mumbai,” Ahmed said. He added that he had never objected to the education of the Sheikh sisters.

Their uncle Abdullah Sheikh stood by the girls and asked them to file a police complaint against Ansari. Earlier in March, when Samina was studying in the building passage for her FYBSc exams Ansari had pushed her on the floor and threw a chair on her, according to allegations. “At that time we had approached the Nagpada Police Station, but an officer, V Pawar refused to register the complaint and said he would put us behind bars instead,” Abdullah said.

They had then approached the Joint Commissioner of Police, Meeran Borwanwar who had asked a Social Service Branch (SSB) officer to look into it. On April 18, the officer told Abdullah and Samina that Ansari had given an undertaking saying he would not harass them anymore. But the threats continued.

Ansari lives diagonally opposite to the Sheikh’s one room home. Aggrieved by police inaction, the family has urged the court to hand over the case to another police station or agency and also provide interim protection to the girls.

Professor of Islamic Studies in St.Xaviers College, Zeenat Shaukat Ali says this is an appalling and sad incident. “It’s a simple matter of promoting stereotypes and not wanting to know better. It is highly offensive to Islam, which has never made any discrimination between the education of men and women. This happening in Mumbai is all the more shocking.”

The family is still reeling from the shock of the incident but the girls and their parents maintain that they will not give up their education.

Deadly assault
On May 11, Ansari allegedly entered the Sheikh's house and assaulted her father Yasin Ali, mother Hasina Banu and elder brother, Azeem with a cricket bat