Social worker Ritasha D’souza was eight years old when Amboli, her cosmopolitan neighbourhood in Andheri West, made national headlines over the killing of two men—Keenan Santos, 24, and Reuben Fernandez, 29–for protecting their female friends from sexual harassment on the street.
By the time D’souza began her postgraduate studies in social work years later, “neighbourhood heroes” Keenan and Reuben had become part of the academic discourse on violence against women.
“Aren’t you from Amboli? People in my class would ask. The dust that engulfs most parts of a city—under perennial construction– hasn’t spared the black granite plaque, partly concealing the names of the two men. But in Amboli, for the local parish and the families of the seven friends, the High Court judgment is a closure or sorts. Even when faced with danger, his first instinct was to ensure his girlfriend’s safety. He stood up for his female friends and their dignity. Reuben Fernandez’s family moved to Goa after his killing while the three women who had accompanied Keenan and Reuben that night have since left the city. Even the Amboli Bar and Kitchen where the boys had their last meal shut down within a few months of the tragedy. In its place stands a line of brighly lit shops in stark contrast to the quaint single-storey cottages in the gaothan on the other side of the road.
In the Catholic-dominated gaothan (literally a village—Mumbai has 52 demarcated gaothans within its city limits) a memorial pillar ‘dedicated to the memory of Keenan Santos & Reuben Fernandez’ stands tall at a busy junction down the road from St Blaise church.
‘You must know all about the incident’, they would say,” D’souza told HT, speaking two days before Bombay High Court upheld the conviction of the main accused Jitendra Fakirchand Rana. Keenan’s younger brother Sheldon told HT, “He was a warrior. The incident was as devastating for them as it was for the Santos and Fernandez families, said Shane.
The court’s order on Thursday sentencing Rana to life imprisonment while acquitting two other men of murder, brings the curtain down on a case that tested a city which prides itself on being the safest city for women in India.
For Shane Santos, even though it’s hard to articulate the pain the family has undergone since Keenan’s death, he says, he understands that what his brother stood up for was right. “Standing up for justice has to be a part of our culture.”
“We had a lot of support. The government too did its part and appointed a good public prosecutor. And then we got to know that they had filed appeals in the Bombay High Court.
Sheldon’s twin Shane who gave up his career in hospitality to pursue law after Keenan’s murder—both were 18 at that time—says the murders shook up the administration. There was real action when all four accused were convicted and sentenced to life in 2016. Because he passed away last year before the appeals were decided,” said Shane who now practises in the Bombay High Court, my father who fought so hard all these years could not really get closure.
