‘Zahra had just learnt to speak fluently’: Kerala arson attack victim’s father

Two-year-old Zahra had just started to speak fluently when her father Shuhaib Saquafi left for Madeena to perform Umrah (an Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca) in the last week of March. Six days later, on April 3, an early morning from his home in Kadalundi of Kerala’s Kozhikode district brought news of the death of his daughter. Zahra died along with her aunt Rahmath, after they fell from the Alappuzha Kannur Executive Express on board which an arson attack had caused panic on the night of Sunday, April 2. 

A prayer ceremony was going on at Zahra's house when TNM reached there on Tuesday. While the congregation chanted for her soul, six-year-old Aysha, Zahra’s elder sister, was staring at the Imam. Her mother Jaseela did not come out of her room. 

Speaking to TNM from his house in Kadalundi, Shuhaib, who is also a religious preacher, said,“I enjoyed her talks for only a week before I left for Umrah. When I heard about the tragedy, I rushed back home and saw her for one last time.”

Zahra had left home after 8.00 pm on April 2 with her aunt Rahmath Manikoth to her maternal home in Mattannur of Kannur. “It had been a while since her grandmother from Mattannur expressed her wish to meet Zahra. My wife was attending a 19-day training (Zahrathul Quran, an Islamic preschool) as she is a teacher at Markaz Public School. So my wife’s elder sister came to pick up Zahra,” Shuhaib said. 

Shuhaib, Zahra's father

He recalled that they had been planning to take little Zahra to Mattannur for a while. “Finally, it happened on that dreadful day. She was very happy to be leaving on a journey. Moreover, she loved staying at Mattannur and she considered her aunt also as her mother. At least my daughter is not alone, she went with her favourite person,” he said. April 6 is Zahra’s maternal grandfather Abdul Rahman’s seventh death anniversary, which was why Rahmath had decided to take Zahra to Mattannur in the week before that.

Rahmath, Zahra, and Raziq, a neighbour who accompanied them, boarded the train around 8.50 pm from Feroke railway station. The mishap happened around 30 minutes later, near the Elathur railway station. According to the police, when the attacker sprayed the inflammable liquid in the D1 coach of the train, everyone ran amok. In the ensuing panic, Rahmath, Zahra, and a third passenger identified as Noufeeq, might have jumped or slipped from the running train. As per the preliminary analysis of the postmortem, the three died by hitting their head.

“We (religious preachers) are not supposed to grieve, we need to console others. But there are times when we lose it. We are still trying to cope with our loss. I was more worried about Jaseela, but she has also come to terms with it, through spiritual ways,” Shuhaib added.