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Fahim Arshad Mohammed Yusuf Ansari is 51 years old, has a wife and a daughter to provide for, and wants to drive an autorickshaw in Mumbai. As we know from court records, he has a three-wheeler licence, issued in January 2024. Since his 2019 release from prison, he has worked at a printing press in Byculla and delivered food for Zomato through the pandemic. What he does not have, and what the Bombay high court last month declined to direct the government to provide him, is a Police Clearance Certificate, without which the Public Service Vehicle badge required to ply a commercial autorickshaw cannot be issued.

The division bench of Justices A. S. Gadkari and Ranjitsinha Raja Bhonsale on April 29 in Fahim Ansari v. State of Maharashtra did not dispute that the petitioner had been acquitted in 2010 of all charges arising out of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, with the acquittal upheld by the Bombay high court in 2011 and confirmed by the Supreme Court in 2012. Nor did it dispute that he had served the full 10-year sentence given to him in the Rampur matter – most of it as an undertrial before his November 1, 2019, conviction. 

What the court did, instead, was take the police’s confidential note at face value, accept that the petitioner had been “providing ancillary logistical support” in the 26/11 conspiracy – a finding the prosecution failed to sustain through three tiers of judicial scrutiny – and conclude that “the possibility of the Petitioner indulging in the same or in similar activity cannot be ruled out”. The petition was dismissed. Fahim Ansari may, the bench helpfully clarified, take up “stationary jobs” or “private employment”.

What an acquittal is supposed to mean

The most striking feature of the judgment is the casual disregard for what an acquittal does, in law. The Acting Public Prosecutor’s submission – recorded in paragraph 5.2 – was that the 26/11 acquittal “is based on the principle of ‘benefit of doubt’”, and is therefore, by implication, a lesser kind of acquittal. The court appears to have........

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