Mumbai, Nov. 6 -- 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. '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. 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 for women in India. On the night of October 20, 2011, a group of seven friends-four men and three women-had gone to the Amboli Kitchen Bar and Restaurant to watch an India-England cricket match on the big screen. The group had just exited the restaurant after the match when four men-not known in the neighbourhood-began pawing the women in the group and making lewd comments. While Keenan Santos verbally confronted the molesters, his friend Avinash Solanki slapped one of the men, all of whom fled shorty after. Only to return armed with knives, cricket bats and stumps. In the melee that followed, Rana and Satish Dulgaj repeatedly stabbed Keenan and Reuben while their two accomplices, Sunil Both and Dipak Piwal, attacked Reuben's brother Benjamin and Avinash. The grievously injured Keenan died hours after the attack, Reuben died days later in hospital. The attacks on a busy road left the city stunned. "More so since it's rare that men physically stand up to defend their women friends being harassed. It was sad that the outcome of that was so tragic," says advocate Audrey Dmello, director of Majlis Legal Centre, Mumbai, "But still, a message went out. This was before the Nirbhaya case (2012) and before the amendments made to the Indian Penal Code (in cases of violence against women)." 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. 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. Keenan's younger brother Sheldon told HT, "He was a warrior. 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. "They (Keenan and Rueben) are always cited as examples of bravery. What they did was not only about protecting women, it was about protecting your friends, protecting one another," said D'souza. 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. "We had a lot of support. The government too did its part and appointed a good public prosecutor. There was real action when all four accused were convicted and sentenced to life in 2016. And then we got to know that they had filed appeals in the Bombay High Court. My father who fought so hard all these years could not really get closure because he passed away last year before the appeals were decided," said Shane, who now practises in the Bombay High Court. One of the four accused, Dulgaj, died while in prison, and on Thursday, a division bench of Justices Makarand Karnik and Sandesh D Patil held that there was no cogent evidence to convict Both and Piwal of the charge of murder. Instead, these two men who had attacked Reuben's brother Benjamin and his friend Avinash with cricket bats and stumps on that night of October 20,2011, were convicted for causing simple hurt. Reuben'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. The incident was as devastating for them as it was for the Santos and Fernandez families, said Shane. 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 brightly lit shops in stark contrast to the quaint single-storey cottages in the gaothan on the other side of the road. A septuagenarian parishioner of St. Blaise Church who prefers to be known only as "Mr Pereira", remembers Keenan, Rueben, their killing, and the loss that their neighbourhood had collectively felt. "In 2011, there was no violence in Amboli. It was a peaceful place. The incident was as shocking as it was unfortunate. And soon after, there was fear in the minds of people. Nobody wanted to step out at night. Over time, people's memory has faded but often when I cross that spot (where Amboli bar and kitchen was located) I think of those brave boys," he said. In Mumbai, the rising graph of crimes against women as per the NCRB data remains worrying. In 2024, the city recorded the second-highest number of crimes against women (6,358) from among 19 metropolitan cities. Though it was still a distant second to Delhi which recorded 13,396 cases. "We should not benchmark crime in a city based on NCRB data because it just means Mumbai is reporting more crime," cautions Majlis's Audrey Dmello. "Mumbai is comparatively safe but we have to stop making these comparisons with Delhi. It's the state capital, millions of girls are out working and the city has to provide them a safe environment," said Dmello. 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."...