The court acquitted the six lifers ruling that the prosecution has failed to prove their links with the conspiracy of the blast, said defence counsel Shahid Hasan.

After coming out of the jail on Tuesday, 5 men said they didn’t know each other until Criminal Investigation Department made them an accused in the case.

While Beg is a resident of Agra, Ghani is from Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir, and the others are from Srinagar. Before they were jailed, Bhatt had a carpet business, Baja used to sell Kashmiri handicraft in Delhi and Kathmandu, Nisar was a Class IX student and Ghani used to run a school, reported The Indian Express

“We have no idea about the world we are stepping into,” says Ghani. “We’ve lost relatives while we were inside. My mother, father and two uncles passed away. We have been acquitted, but who will bring back those years,” says Beg, adding that his sister has since got married and his niece is now about to get married too.

According to a report in Indian Express, when his relatives hugged him, he started crying. One was Beg’s son, Rizwan, and the other is his brother, Saleem. “We never lost hope all these years,” says Saleem, trying to hold back his tears. “Last night, we couldn’t sleep or eat. The anticipation, and then the paper work, seemed to go on forever,” says Nisar. He stated that he was just 16 years old when he was made an accused, but the officials showed his age as 19 then. Now 39, he says he would like to get married and try to make a fresh start.