Three more get death in 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case

26 July, 2007:

Three more persons have been awarded death sentences and one person has been sentenced to life imprisonment for having lobbed grenades at the Fishermen Colony in central Mumbai during the 1993 serial blasts.

Pramod Kode, judge of the special Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act court, sentenced Zakir Hussain Shaikh, Feroz Mallik, and Abdul Akhtar Khan to death on July 24, 2007.

Zakir Hussain Shaikh, Feroz Mallik and Abdul Akhtar Khan were found to be actively involved in the conspiracy for a long time and also attended weapons training in Pakistan, organised by Tiger Memon, the prime accused, who is absconding.

The special TADA court held that theirs was a “terrorist act which is synonymous with waging war” against the Union of India as they had intentionally gone to the colony in Mahim in central Mumbai with the “heinous objective” of killing innocent people.

The judge continued: “In violence, the accused have the victim in mind but in the case of terrorism, an act of cowardice, it is not against a particular victim but society at large.”

Moin Qureshi was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role in the grenade attack since, the court observed, he was a minor at the time of the incident and also got involved in the conspiracy in the final stages.

Three persons were killed and six other were injured in the grenade attack at the Fishermen Colony in central Mumbai in 1993.

The court has so far sentenced 91 of the 100 convicts in the 1993 serial blasts case.

The nine convicts awaiting sentencing in the case include Farooq Pawale, who planted the RDX-laden vehicles at the Air-India building in south Mumbai and Lucky Petrol Pump near Shiv Sena Bhavan in central Mumbai’s Dadar, four members of prime conspirator Tiger Memon’s family, Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt, and three of his associates.

These nine people have been convicted for illegal possession of weapons. Seven persons had been earlier sentenced to death by the TADA court.

With the pronouncement of punishment on June 24, 2007, a total of 10 persons have been sentenced to death and 17 others have been given life imprisonment for carrying out 12 blasts on March 12, 1993, in which 257 people were killed and over 700 others injured.