Tension was palpable in the special TADA court on Friday as the Memon family members were to face their sentences.

However, all was over in just half-an-hour, packed with lot of drama by Yaqub Memon, the younger brother of Tiger Memon who got the death rap.

The Memon brothers were sitting in the dock in the rear of the courtroom while Rubeena, who had been on bail to look after her children, arrived a bit late. The designated judge Pramod Kode asked her lawyer Farhana Shah “where is Rubeena ?” and was told that she had already arrived in the court premises.

With her head covered by a brown burqa, Rubeena entered the courtroom and went straight to her brothers-in-law. She was perhaps hoping for a lighter sentence, but soon she found that she was in for a lifer. In fact, she was the first to get her sentence, and she walked out of the court. There she broke down and was crying profusely.

Rubeena was followed by Yusuf Memon, about whom the judge remarked that he is “seriously sick”, which saved him from the death penalty. He was also given life imprisonment and so did his brother Issa. The last was Yaqub himself, who got the death rap, the last convict to receive the hardest punishment.

Yaqub was the first accused in the case who was convicted by the TADA court in September 2006 and at that time he had made much noise in the courtroom, expressing anguish over the conviction. He said he tried to follow Gandhiji’s principles and that was why he returned to India and surrendered to the CBI to clear his family’s name from the terror stigma.

On Friday as soon as the sentence was awarded, he angrily gesticulated towards the judge and invoking Jesus Christ, said “Forgive this man Lord for he knows not what he does.”

His other two brothers, Issa and Yusuf, tried to calm him down.

While he was being taken out of the courtroom, he turned to mediapersons and shouted, “I have forgiven this man, I have forgiven this man,” referring to the judge. The special public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam later told the reporters that an offence of contempt of the court would be registered against Yaqub.