The report also pointed out that although the police maintained that she was killed June 15, medical autopsy showed she died a day earlier. Ishrat, a college student, was from Mumbra in Thane.

Clutching an Urdu newspaper clipping about Ishrat's funeral that was attended by around 200,000 people, Nussarat says: 'There is support back home, but people fear that interacting with us may bring them under the police radar and they want to avoid that.'

After the Gujarat Police reiterated that Ishrat was indeed a terrorist, mother Shemima is naturally worried.

'The incident destroyed my family. I worry for my six kids' future. Their education is incomplete since income wasn't available. We were shunned by the society. My son didn't get a job and was told it was because he was a terrorist. My eldest girl is 25 and proposals for marriage do not come.

'My Ishrat was my support. She was only trying to do some summer job as a sales girl. She used to always say that bad times will get over soon. I pray this comes true now,' added the sobbing widow.

Nusarrat had hoped to study law or become a teacher.

'Aapa told me that I should join her college in Mumbai. Then she was killed. Since then it has been a fight for survival for all of us. There was a time when we couldn't eat for days.'

Their lawyer Grover feels it is high time innocent people like Ishrat stop becoming scapegoats for 'political patronage'.

'The Gujarat government is using the premise of intelligence input as alibi (to justify her killing),' Grover told IANS. 'There have been a spate of encounters in Gujarat... The scene there is serious. An external agency like CBI has to intervene and conduct an independent inquiry.'