1993 Bombay bombings

1993 Bombay bomb blast
Location Bombay, Maharashtra, India
Date 12 March 1993 Friday
13:30–15:40 (UTC+05:30)
Target Hotels, office buildings, banks, petrol pump, markets etc
Attack type
Car bombings
Weapons 13 car bombs (RDX) containing shrapnel
Deaths 257[1]
Non-fatal injuries
713[2]
Assailants Mafia groups affiliated with D-Company

The 1993 Bombay bombings were a series of 13 bomb explosions that took place in Bombay, India on 12 March 1993.[3] The coordinated attacks were the most destructive bomb explosions in Indian history.[4] This was first of its kind serial-bomb-blasts across the world. The single-day attacks resulted in 257 fatalities and 717 injuries.[5]

The attacks were coordinated by Dawood Ibrahim,[6] don of the Mumbai-based international organised crime syndicate named D-Company.[7] Ibrahim is believed to have ordered and helped organise the bombings in Mumbai, through his subordinates Tiger Memon and Yakub Memon.

The Supreme Court of India gave its judgement on 21 March 2013 after over 20 years of judicial proceedings sentencing the accused.[8][9][10] However, the two main suspects in the case, Ibrahim and Tiger Memon, have not yet been arrested or tried.[11] After India's three-judge Supreme Court bench rejected Memon's curative petition, saying the grounds raised by him do not fall within the principles laid down by the apex court in 2002,[12] the Maharashtra state government executed Yakub Memon, on 30 July 2015.[13]

Prelude

Background

In December 1992 and January 1993, there was widespread rioting in Mumbai[14] following the Babri Masjid demolition in Ayodhya. A series of riots soon erupted throughout the nation, most notably in Mumbai. Five years after the December–January riots, the Srikrishna Commission Report found that nine hundred individuals lost their lives and over two thousand were injured.[15]

Confession of Gul Mohammed

Three days before the bombings took place on 9 March 1993, a small time hood from the Behrampada slum in North east Mumbai named Gul Noor Mohammad Sheikh a.k.a. "Gullu" was detained at the Nav Pada police station. A participant in the communal riots that had rocked Mumbai the previous year, Gullu was also one of the 19 men handpicked by the silver smuggler and chief mastermind, Tiger Memon and sent to Pakistan via Dubai on 19 February 1993, for training of the use of arms and bomb making.[16]

Upon completion of his training, Gullu returned to Mumbai via Dubai on 4 March 1993, only to find that in his absence the police had picked up his brothers to get him to surrender. In a vain attempt to secure his brothers' release, Gullu surrendered to the police. He confessed to his role in the riots, his training in Pakistan, and a conspiracy underway to bomb major locations around the city, including the Mumbai Stock Exchange, Sahar International Airport and the Sena Bhavan. However, his conspiracy claim was dismissed by the police as "mere bluff".[16]

The arrest of Gul Mohammed spurred Tiger Memon to advance the date of the blasts which were to coincide with the Shiv Jayanti celebrations in April 1993 to 12 March to pre-empt any police action.[16][17]

The bombings

At 1:30 pm a powerful car bomb exploded in the basement of the Mumbai Stock Exchange building. The 28-story office building housing the exchange was severely damaged, and many nearby office buildings also suffered some damage. About 50 were killed by this explosion.[18] About 30 minutes later, another car bomb exploded in front of the Mandvi Branch Corporation Bank near Masjid, and from 1:30 pm to 3:40 pm a total of 13 bombs exploded throughout Mumbai. Most of the bombs were car bombs, but some were in scooters.[19]

Three hotels, the Hotel Sea Rock, Hotel Juhu Centaur, and Hotel Airport Centaur, were targeted by suitcase bombs left in rooms booked by the perpetrators.[20] Banks, the regional passport office, the Air India Building, and a major shopping complex were also hit. Bombs exploded at Zaveri Bazaar, area opposite of Century Bazaar, Katha Bazaar, Sena Bhavan, and Plaza Theatre. A jeep-bomb at the Century Bazaar exploded.[21] Grenades were also thrown at Sahar International Airport and at Fishermen's Colony, apparently targeting Hindus at the latter.[22] A double decker bus was very badly damaged in one of the explosions and that single incident accounted for the greatest loss of life – perhaps up to ninety people were killed.[21]

Locations attacked included:

Aftermath

The official number of dead was 257 with 1,400 others injured (some news sources say 317 people died;[26] this is due to a bomb which killed 60 in Calcutta on 17 March[27]).

On 10 August 2003, two large and destructive bombs left in taxis exploded in south Mumbai – the Gateway of India and Zaveri Bazaar in the busy Kalbadevi area – killing 52 people and wounding more than a hundred others.

On 11 July 2006, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra during the blasts, Sharad Pawar, admitted, on record, that he had "deliberately misled" people following the 1993 Mumbai blasts by saying there were "12 and not 11" explosions, adding the name of a Muslim-dominated locality to show that people from both communities had been affected.[28] He tried to justify this deception by claiming that it was a move to prevent communal riots by falsely portraying that both Hindu and Muslim communities in the city had been affected adversely. He also admits to lying about evidence recovered and misleading people into believing that some of it pointed to the Tamil Tigers as possible suspects.[28]

The bombings also caused a major rift within the D-Company, the most powerful criminal organisation in the Mumbai underworld headed by Dawood Ibrahim. Infuriated at the bombings, Ibrahim's right-hand man Chotta Rajan split from the organisation, taking most of the leadership-level Hindu aides such as Sadhu Shetty, Jaspal Singh and Mohan Kotiyan with him. Rajan's split divided the Mumbai underworld along communal lines and pitted Chotta Rajan's predominantly Hindu gang against Dawood Ibrahim's predominantly Muslim D-Company. The ensuing gang war took the lives of more than a hundred gangsters and continues to this day.[29] Seven of the accused (Salim Kurla, Majeed Khan, Shakil Ahmed, Mohammed Jindran, Hanif Kadawala, Akbar Abu Sama Khan and Mohammed Latif) were systematically assassinated by Chotta Rajan's hitmen.[30][31]

Arrests, convictions and verdict

Many hundreds of people were arrested and detained in Indian courts. In 2006, 100 of the 129 finally accused were found to be guilty and were convicted by Justice PD Kode of the specially designated TADA court.[32] Many of the 100 are still missing including the main conspirators and masterminds of the attacks – Tiger Memon and Dawood Ibrahim. On 12 September 2006, the special TADA court hearing the case convicted four members of the Memon family for their involvement in the 1993 Mumbai bombings.[33]

Three other members of the Memon family were acquitted by the special TADA court with the judge giving them the benefit of the doubt.[33] The four members of the Memon family are being held after being found guilty on charges of conspiring and abetting acts of terror.[34] All four of them face jail terms from five years in prison to life imprisonment, that will be determined based on the severity of their crime.[33] A day later, the TADA court announced that it would start pronouncing the verdict of the thirty-one people charged with transporting and planting bombs.

Yakub Memon, the brother of prime accused Tiger Memon, was charged for possession of unauthorised arms. After the blasts, family members of Tiger, including Yakub, escaped from Mumbai to Dubai and Pakistan. Correspondents say Tiger Memon owned a restaurant in Mumbai and was allegedly closely associated with Dawood Ibrahim, the chief suspect.[35]

Except for Tiger and his brother Ayub, the entire family returned to India and were promptly arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in 1994. Since then, Yakub was in custody and was undergoing treatment for depression. The Memon family was subsequently tried in court and found guilty of conspiracy. The defence lawyers have asked for leniency in the sentencing and have caused delays in the process.[35]

Yakub Memon was executed by hanging in Nagpur Central Jail at around 6:30 AM IST on 30 July 2015.

Two of the accused, Mohammed Umar Khatlab and Badshah Khan (pseudonym given by the prosecution to hide his real identity) turned state approvers.[31]

Dawood Ibrahim, believed to have masterminded the terrorist attacks, is the Don of the Mumbai organised crime syndicate D-Company, largely consisting of Muslims. He is suspected of having connections to several Pakistan based terrorist groups,[36] such as al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden,[37] as well as Lashkar-e-Toiba[38] and was declared a terrorist by the governments of India and the United States in 2003. Ibrahim is now wanted by Interpol as a part of the worldwide terror syndicate of Osama bin Laden.[39] He has been in hiding since the blasts and is believed to be hiding in Pakistan, which the Pakistani government denies.[40] The Bush administration in the United States imposed sanctions on Ibrahim in 2006.[41]

The penalty stage of the longest running trial in India's history is still ongoing. In February 2007, prosecutors asked for the death penalty for forty-four of the hundred convicted. The prosecution also requested the death penalty for those convicted of conspiracy in the case.[42] Asghar Yusuf Mukadam and Shahnawaz Qureshi, who have been found guilty for involvement in the blasts pleaded for leniency, claiming that they were not terrorists and were emotionally driven to participate in the act. Mukadam claimed that the main conspirators took advantage of his "frame of mind" after the demolition of Babri Masjid and the subsequent riots, alleging police partiality during the riots. "Vested interests" instigated him to act as he did. Quareshi was trained in Pakistan to handle arms and ammunition. He and Muquddam parked the explosive filled vehicle at Plaza cinema, Mumbai which resulted in 10 deaths and 37 injuries.[43] Qureshi reached Pakistan via Dubai, where he claims he was taken "under the pretext of providing ... an alternative job". He claims that his house was set on fire during the riots.[44]

Some of the conspirators who managed to flee out of India after the bombings were arrested and extradited to India later on. These conspirators were declared absconders during the course of the trial. Abu Salem, Mustafa Dossa, Firoz Khan, Taher Merchant, Riyaz Siddiqui and Abdul Qayoom[45] amongst others were arrested and trial continued against these absconders in a special TADA court in Mumbai. Ujjwal Nikam who was earlier the Special Prosecutor in these case was later on replaced by Deepak Salvi to continue with the trial in the light of the subsequent developments.[45]

The Memons

The Planters

Prosecution has sought the death sentence for all except Imtiaz Ghavate. As he is HIV positive, the prosecution has sought a lesser sentence for him.

In March 2013, the death sentence awarded by the TADA court to ten convicts- Abdul Gani Ismail Turk, Parvez Nazir Ahmed Shaikh, Mushtaq Tarani, Asghar Mukadam, Shahnawaz Qureshi, Shoaib Ghansar, Firoze Amani Malki, Zakir Hussain, Abdul Akhtar Khan and Farooq Pawale, was commuted to life in prison until death by the Supreme Court of India. Only the death sentence of Yakub Memon was upheld.[58]

Accused involved

Mohammed Moin Qureshi, Feroz Amani Malik, Bashir Khairulla, Zakir Hussain and Abdul Akhtar Khan had pelted hand grendes in Mahim Causeway causing three deaths and injuring six. The driver Salim Shaikh, did not pelt any hand grenades.

Landing agents

Customs officials

Policemen

Sanjay Dutt and co-conspirators

Others

Popular culture

S. Hussain Zaidi released a book by the name of Black Friday – The True Story of the Mumbai Bomb Blasts about the 1993 Mumbai bombings. It was later made into a film in 2004 by Indian film maker Anurag Kashyap named Black Friday. Babu Janardhanan's Mammootty-starrer Malayalam film entitled Mumbai March 12 is also based on the bomb blasts.[74]

Salman Rushdie's Novel The Moor's Last Sigh draws on the 1993 Mumbai bombings and some events surrounding them.

See also

References

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External links

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