We Cannot Forgive Salman Khan: Family of Hit-and- Run Victim

I followed him into a narrow by-lane inside a
desolate slum colony in suburban Mumbai. It
looked abandoned, the place. Even its
residents didn’t seem to care about it, cursed
it probably.
The ground was uneven and
rocky, littered with human waste. Dimly lit,
the only illumination was from the scattered
heaps of burning garbage. I could smell the
pungent plastic on fire, which made the little
man guiding me cough. He had obviously
inhaled too much of it over the years.

“ Bass, do minute aur, madam, ”
he turned around
to look at me. He led me to his shanty,
patiently shooing away the dogs, cats and
goats coming in our way.

As we neared his dwelling, we passed a
group of men standing in a circle, discussing
something. When they saw me with a diary
and pen in my hand, they broke their
conversation and rushed after me.

“Madam, madam,” shouted one of them, “ Aap
patrakar hai? ” (Are you a journalist?)

When I nodded in response, he joined his
hands and said, “Please help him, madam. He
needs help. Of all the people here, this man
needs help. We have been praying, madam.
But it is you who has to help him”.

The little man, Feroz Khan, looked
embarrassed again. He had lost his father to
the 2002 hit-and-run accident, for which
actor Salman Khan was recently acquitted. He
lost his guardian to an unforeseen tragedy,
his adolescence to the fight for survival, but
still he had a twinkle in his eyes.

“ Chaliye, madam,” he smiled at me.

“Nothing Can Bring Abbu
Back”
When he knocked on the tin sheet that made
for the door to his home, his wife opened it
for us. We walked inside the fifty-square-feet
tenement, and I saw that the space had tin
sheets for walls as well; a temporary
structure that Feroz had probably built on his
own. The floor was still uneven in several
places. There were barrels of water strewn
all around, laminated pictures of teachings
from the Holy Quran, and the only furniture
was a cot and a table. As we walked in,
Feroz’s two-year-old son put away his milk
bottle and cuddled up to his father.

“I was twelve when abbu was killed,” said
Feroz. “I don’t remember that day, but I
know that it was the day that changed my
life. After abbu was gone, my mother sold
fish, bananas, anything she could sell. She
spent every day wondering where my next
meal would come from. As for me, I never
went to school. I did several odd jobs. And
now, I work as a labourer. There are days
when I can afford to bring food for my
children; there are days when I can’t.
Although we are surviving, nothing can bring
abbu back. And now, with this verdict from
the court, we don’t even know who took him
away,” he said. Feroz’s mother is seated next
to him, cradling his son in her lap, smiling at
him. I noticed that even as the man spoke
words that were disastrously moving, Feroz’s
eyes remained expressionless, staunch, like
the heartache that had penetrated deep into
his skin.
“Salman’s Security Guards
Asked Us To Leave”

“We went to Salman Khan’s bungalow a
couple of times. We were hoping for help.
But the security guards there told us to leave
saying that saahab wasn’t home. We also
approached an influential politician, but he
said he couldn’t help us. Beti , listen to this old
woman, justice is always sold to the rich.
Poor people like us cannot afford justice,”
Feroz’s mother, Begum Jahan spoke calmly,
her eyes still glued to her grandson.
When I tried consoling her, she suddenly lost
her poise. “I couldn’t even see my husband’s
face after his death. Do you know that? His
face was gone. His stomach was crushed
under those wheels. When a man dies, they
carry him to the crematorium on four
shoulders. You know how my husband made
his final journey? He was crammed into a
bag thrown on a hand cart, the one they use
to carry garbage. This Feroz, my son, he
pushed the cart to the crematorium. That
accident took away everything we had,
without the smallest courtesy of leaving us
with his dead body, the one we could
respectfully cremate,” she yelled in whispers,
afraid of waking up her younger grandchild.

“We Cannot Forgive
Salman”

“We Cannot Forgive
Salman”
When I turned to Feroz, his eyes were still as
impassive. He said, “There is anger, madam,
lots of anger. But it’s inconsequential. Like
justice, even anger is not affordable to the
poor. No matter what anyone says, we cannot
forgive Salman. I couldn’t even see my
father’s face one last time. And yet, that rich
man never came looking for us. They say he
has deposited a compensation amount with
the court, but it never reached us.”
After a few minutes, when I began to leave,
Feroz offered to escort me to the end of the
lane. Seeing him leave, his son clutched his
knee. Feroz lifted the child up in his arms,
and the boy was asleep in seconds. At the end
of the lane, when I shook his hand to say
goodbye, his eyes looked hopeful.
“It is my two sons, madam, that I’m most
worried about,” he said. “My abbu wanted me
to be a doctor, madam. I couldn’t fulfil his
wish. But I want my sons to do it. I want
them to study. I want them to be respectable
men and not an illiterate like me. I don’t
want fate to be a liability to them, like it was
to me. I want them to be happy. I feel scared
for them, madam, I feel very scared.
They
will be happy, madam, right?
They will be
happy, no?” he asked me while he had tears
in his eyes.