The next time they met him was at Safdarjung Hospital, where his brother and cousin brought him on the morning of the 21st. “He didn’t speak while we were in Meerut, but after a couple of days here he had begun to speak. He would tell me that Manish Tyagi and Ashok Tyagi are the ones who did this to him, don’t spare them”, says Mushtaq.

A few days later, though, Arshad told his brother he would not live. He wasn’t able to speak properly after that. “We even removed his oxygen mask for a few seconds because he really wanted to say something. But all he could muster up was ‘Malik ne jala diya’ (the boss burnt me)”.