The 1993 Mumbai blasts case finally reached fruition in a special Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) court on Thursday and will now go to the high court a good 24 years after the deadly blasts ripped through Mumbai (then called Bombay) killing 257 people and injuring 713 innocents. For those who lost their next of kin it indeed has been an extraordinarily long and torturous wait for justice. The special court awarded death sentence to Taher Mohammed Merchant and Firoz Abdul Rashid Khan and sentenced Abu Salem and Karimullah Osan Khan to life imprisonment with a fine of Rs.2 lakh each. Another accused, Riyaz Ahmed Siddiqui, was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. The mastermind of the blasts, Dawood Ibrahim and many other accused had fled to Pakistan and have escaped punishment for now by evading the law. It is an open secret that Dawood is being persistently shielded with connivance of the Pakistan government, which brazenly denies that this underworld don and fugitive is being sheltered there. Abu Salem and his then paramour Monica Bedi had escaped to Portugal after the blasts but were extradited to India in 2005 with the Portuguese government extracting a commitment from the then Indian government led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee that he would not be awarded the death penalty and would not be jailed for a period beyond 25 years. While the special court has awarded him life imprisonment, it is now for the Modi government to commute it to 25 years imprisonment in line with the Indian government’s commitment to Portugal.
A series of 13 blasts in quick succession had ripped through various locations of India’s financial capital on March 12, 1993. The targets included the Air India Building, the Bombay Stock Exchange, Zaveri Bazar, hotels SeaRock and Juhu Centaur. Property worth Rs.27 crore was damaged. That only two accused have been given death sentence now and one, Yakub Memon was hanged earlier makes one wonder whether justice has been done adequately. That there was a deep-rooted conspiracy of which State or non-State actors in Pakistan were a part exacerbated the heinousness of the crime. While international pressure needs to be built up on the Pakistan government to own up to Dawood’s presence in Pakistan and to extradite him to India to face the law, a stricter view needs to be taken of the role of other conspirators in the heinous act. The High Court which would now take up the prosecution’s appeal for enhancement of sentence must look upon this as a rarest of rare case because innocent lives were lost in the most tragic of circumstances en masse.
