1993 Bombay bombings | |
---|---|
Location | Bombay (now Mumbai), Maharashtra, India |
Date | 12 March 1993 13:30–15:40 (UTC+05:30) |
Target | |
Attack type |
|
Weapons | 13 car bombs (RDX) containing shrapnel |
Deaths | 257 [1] |
Injured | 1,400 [2] |
Perpetrators | Mafia groups affiliated with the D-Company |
The 1993 Bombay bombings was a series of 12 [3] [4] [5] terrorist bombings that took place primarily in Hindu majority areas in Bombay (now Mumbai), Maharashtra, on 12 March 1993. [6] The single-day attacks resulted in 257 fatalities and 1,400 injuries. [1] [2] [7] [8] [9] The attacks were coordinated by Dawood Ibrahim, [10] leader of the Mumbai-based international organised crime syndicate D-Company. [11] Ibrahim was believed to have ordered and helped organize the bombings through his subordinate Tiger Memon.
For several years, confusion existed about the number of blasts, whether they were 12 or 13 in number. This was because Sharad Pawar, then-chief minister of Maharashtra, stated on television that day that there had been 13 blasts. He later revealed that he had lied on purpose and that there had been only 12 blasts, none of them in Muslim-dominated areas; he also confessed that he had attempted to mislead the public into believing that the blasts could be the work of the LTTE, a Sri Lankan militant organization, when in fact intelligence reports had already confirmed to him that Mumbai's underworld (known as the "D-Company", a reference to Dawood Ibrahim) were the perpetrators of the serial blasts. [12] [13]
The Supreme Court of India gave its judgement on 21 March 2013, after over 20 years of judicial proceedings, upholding the death sentence against suspected ringleader Yakub while commuting the previous death sentences against 10 others to life in prison. [14] [15] [16] However, two of the main suspects in the case, Ibrahim and Tiger, have not yet been arrested or tried. [17] After India's three-judge Supreme Court bench rejected his curative petition, saying the grounds raised by him do not fall within the principles laid down by the apex court in 2002, [18] the Maharashtra government executed Yakub on 30 July 2015. [19]
In December 1992 and January 1993, there was widespread rioting throughout the nation [20] following the Babri Masjid demolition in Ayodhya, where some of the most notable riots occurred in Mumbai. Five years after the December–January riots, the Srikrishna Commission report found that 900 individuals had died and over 2,000 had been injured. [21]
On 9 March 1993, three days before the bombings took place, a small-time criminal from the Bombay slum of Behrampada named Gul Noor Mohammad Sheikh (aka "Gullu") was detained at the Nag Pada police station. During the communal riots that had rocked Bombay the previous year, Gullu was also one of the 19 men handpicked by Tiger Memon, a silver smuggler whose office was burnt in the riots. He became chief mastermind of the bombings and for training in the use of guns and bomb-making. [22]
Gullu had been sent to Pakistan via Dubai on 19 February 1993 and upon completion of his training returned to Mumbai on 4 March. In his absence, the police detained Gullu's brothers to encourage him to surrender, which he did. 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 Bombay Stock Exchange, Sahar International Airport and the Shiv. However, his conspiracy claim was dismissed by the police as a "mere bluff". Gullu's arrest advanced the date of the bombings which had originally been planned to coincide with the Shiv Jayanti celebrations in April 1993. [22] [23]
At 13:30 hours on 12 March 1993, a powerful car bomb exploded in the basement of the Bombay Stock Exchange building. The 28-storey office building was severely damaged and many nearby office buildings also suffered damage. Reports indicate that 50 were killed by this explosion. [24] About 30 minutes later, another car bomb exploded in front of the Mandvi branch of Corporation Bank. From 13:30 hours to 15:40 hours a total of 12 bombs exploded throughout Mumbai. Most of the bombs were car bombs but some were in scooters. [25]
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. [26] Banks, the regional passport office, the Air India Building, and a major shopping complex were also hit. Bombs exploded at Zaveri Bazaar and opposite it, a jeep-bomb exploded at the Century Bazaar. [27] Grenades were thrown at Sahar International Airport and at Fishermen's Colony, apparently targeting certain citizens at the latter. [28] A double-decker bus was very badly damaged in the deadliest explosion, with as many as 90 people killed. [27]
The locations attacked:
In 1997, the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Sharad Pawar, admitted that he had "deliberately misled" people following the 1993 Mumbai bombings by saying there were "13 and not 12" explosions and had added the name of a Muslim-dominated locality to show that people from both communities had been affected. [33] He attempted 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 admitted to lying about evidence recovered and misleading people into believing that it pointed to the Tamil Tigers as possible suspects. [34]
The official number of fatalities was 257 with 1,400 others injured (some sources reported that 317 people died; [35] this misreport was partly due to a bomb which killed 45 in Calcutta on 16 March [1] and was not part of 12 March Bombay bombings).
The bombings caused a major rift within D-Company, the most powerful criminal organisation in the Bombay underworld, headed by Dawood Ibrahim. Infuriated at the bombings, Ibrahim's right-hand man, Chhotta Rajan, split from the organisation and took most of the leadership-level Hindu aides with him, including Sadhu, Jaspal Singh and Mohan Kotiyan. Rajan's split divided the Bombay underworld along communal lines and pitted Chhota 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 continued in 2017. [36] Seven of the accused (Salim Kurla, Majeed Khan, Shakil Ahmed, Mohammed Jindran, Hanif Kadawala, Akbar Abu Sama Khan and Mohammed Latif) were assassinated by Rajan's hitmen. [37] [38]
Many hundreds of people were arrested and detained in the Indian courts. In 2006, 100 of 129 accused were convicted by Justice PD Kode of the specially designated Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) court. [39] Many of those convicted have eluded custody, including the mastermind of the attacks, Tiger Memon. [40]
On 12 September 2006, the special TADA court convicted four members of the Memon family [40] on charges of conspiring and abetting acts of terror. [41] They faced jail terms from five years to life imprisonment, that would be determined based on the severity of their crime. [40] Three other members of the Memon family were acquitted with the judge giving them the benefit of the doubt. [40]
Yakub Memon was charged with possession of unauthorised arms. After the bombings, family members of Tiger Memon, including Yakub, escaped to Dubai and Pakistan. Correspondents say Tiger owned a restaurant in Mumbai and was allegedly closely associated with Dawood Ibrahim, the suspected mastermind. [42] Except for Tiger and Yakub, the entire family returned to India and was promptly arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in 1994. Yakub was later taken into custody and was undergoing treatment for depression. The Memon family was tried in court and found guilty of conspiracy. The defence lawyers asked for leniency in the sentencing and caused delays in the process. [42] Yakub Memon was executed by hanging in Nagpur Central Jail at 6:35 a.m. IST on 30 July 2015. Two of the accused, Mohammed Umar Khatlab and Badshah Khan (a pseudonym given by the prosecution to hide his real identity), turned state informers. [38]
Dawood Ibrahim, believed to have masterminded the terrorist attacks, is the Don of the Mumbai organised crime syndicate D-Company. He is suspected of having connections to terrorist elements [43] such as al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, [44] as well as Lashkar-e-Taiba, [45] 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. [46] The Bush administration in the United States imposed sanctions on Ibrahim in 2006. [47]
The penalty stage of the longest-running trial in India's history continued. In February 2007, prosecutors asked for the death penalty for 44 of the 100 convicted. The prosecution also requested the death penalty for those convicted of conspiracy in the case. [48] Asghar Yusuf Mukadam and Shahnawaz Qureshi, who have been found guilty of involvement in the bombings 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 which resulted in 10 deaths and 37 injuries. [49] Qureshi reached Pakistan via Dubai, where he claims he was taken "under the pretext of providing ... an alternative job". He claimed his house was set on fire during the riots. [50]
Some of the conspirators who managed to flee India after the bombings were arrested and extradited to India. These conspirators were declared absconders during the trial. Abu Salem, Mustafa Dossa, Firoz Khan, Taher Merchant, Riyaz Siddiqui, Karimullah Khan, and Abdul Kayoum [51] amongst others were arrested and the trial continued against these absconders in a special TADA court in Mumbai. Ujjwal Nikam who was earlier the Special Prosecutor in these cases was replaced by Deepak Salvi to continue with the trial in the light of the subsequent developments. [51] On 16 June 2017 gangster Mustafa Dossa and Firoz Khan were found guilty of conspiracy, which can carry the death penalty. On 26 June 2017, Dossa died of cardiac arrest in a Mumbai Hospital. Kayoom Sheikh was acquitted due to lack of evidence. [52]
The prosecution had sought the death sentence for all of the following except Imtiaz Ghavate. As he is HIV positive, the prosecution sought a lesser sentence for him.
In March 2013, most of these death sentences awarded by the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act court were commuted to life in prison until death by the Supreme Court of India. Only the death sentence of Yakub Memon was upheld. [65]
Sharadchandra Govindrao Pawar is an Indian politician. He served as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra for four terms and in the Union Council of Ministers as the Minister of Defence in the Cabinet of P.V. Narsimha Rao as well as the Minister of Agriculture in the Cabinet of Manmohan Singh. He is the first and former president of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), "which he founded in 1999, after separating from the Indian National Congress". His faction of the NCP was split by his nephew, Ajit Pawar. He leads his faction of the NCP in the Rajya Sabha, the upper chamber of the Indian parliament. He is the chairperson of Maha Vikas Aghadi, a regional Maharashtra-based political alliance.
Abu Salem, also known as Aqil Ahmed Azmi and Abu Samaan, is an Indian criminal gangster and terrorist from Azamgarh district in Uttar Pradesh, Central India. Abu Salem worked in the D-Company as a driver transporting artillery and contraband. Later he rose among the ranks after he introduced a new strategy of hiring unemployed youths from his hometown Azamgarh to come to Mumbai, execute shoot-outs and return the next day remaining untraced by the Mumbai police. He is currently serving a life sentence in India.
Sanjay Balraj Dutt is an Indian actor, playback singer and film producer who works in Hindi cinema in addition to a few Telugu, Kannada, Tamil, Punjabi films. One of the most popular and recognised actors of Hindi cinema, in a career spanning over four decades, Dutt has won several accolades and acted in over 135 films.
D-Company is a name coined by the Indian media for one of Mumbai underworld's organized crime syndicate founded and controlled by Dawood Ibrahim, an Indian crime boss, drug dealer and wanted terrorist. In 2011, Ibrahim, along with his D-Company, was number three on FBI's "The World's 10 Most Wanted Fugitives" list.
Black Friday is a 2004 Indian Hindi-language crime film written and directed by Anurag Kashyap. Based on Black Friday: The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts, a book by Hussain Zaidi about the 1993 Bombay bombings, it chronicles the events that led to the blasts and the subsequent police investigation. Produced by Arindam Mitra of Mid-Day, the film stars Pawan Malhotra, Kay Kay Menon, Aditya Srivastava, Kishor Kadam and Zakir Hussain.
The Bombay riots were a series of riots that took place in Bombay, Maharashtra, between December 1992 and January 1993. An estimated 900 people, predominantly Muslims, were killed. The riots were mainly due to escalations of hostilities after large scale protests by Muslims in reaction to the 1992 Babri Masjid Demolition by Hindu Karsevaks in Ayodhya; and by Hindus in regards with the Ram Temple issue.
Organised crime in India refers to organised crime elements originating in India and active in many parts of the world. The purpose of organised crime in India, as elsewhere in the world, is monetary gain. Its virulent form in modern times is due to several socio-economic and political factors and advances in science and technology. There is no firm data to indicate the number of organised criminal gangs operating in the country, their membership, their modus operandi, and the areas of their operations. Their structure and leadership patterns may not strictly fall in line with the classical Italian mafia.
Rajendra Sadashiv Nikalje, popularly known by his moniker Chhota Rajan, is an Indian gangster and convicted criminal who served as the crime lord of a major crime syndicate based in Mumbai.
Ibrahim Mushtaq Abdul Razzaq Memon, better known by the nickname Tiger Memon, is a gangster and terrorist, reputed to be one of the masterminds behind the 1993 Mumbai bombings. He is wanted by Interpol and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). He is a former member of D-Company, a gang led by Dawood Ibrahim. He got the nickname Tiger after helping a petty drugs and weapons smuggler to evade the crime branch of Mumbai Police by driving his car recklessly over 100 km/h on one-way roads.
The 2006 Mumbai train bombings were a series of seven bomb blasts on 11 July. They took place over a period of 11 minutes on the Suburban Railway in Mumbai, the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the nation's financial capital. The bombs were set off in pressure cookers on trains plying on the Western Line Suburban Section of the Mumbai Division of Western Railway. The blasts killed 209 people and injured over 700 more.
The 25 August 2003 Mumbai bombings were twin car bombings in the Indian city of Mumbai that killed 54, and injured 244 people. One of the bomb explosions took place at the Gateway of India, which is a major tourist attraction. The other bomb went off in a jewellery market Zaveri Bazaar near the Mumba Devi temple in central Mumbai. Both the bombs were planted in parked taxis and exploded during the lunch hour. No group initially claimed responsibility for the attack, but Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba was blamed for it.
Yakub Abdul Razzaq Memon was an Indian terrorist financier convicted of terrorism over his financial involvements in the 1993 Bombay bombings, and the brother of one of the prime suspects in the bombings, Tiger Memon. After his appeals and petitions for clemency were all rejected, he was executed at Nagpur Central Jail on 30 July 2015. Memon financially assisted his brother Tiger Memon and Dawood Ibrahim in planning and executing the bombings. Memon handled Tiger's funds, funded the training of 15 youths who were sent to a secret location to learn handling arms and ammunition, purchased the vehicles used in the bombings, and stockpiled weapons.
Ujjwal Nikam is an Indian special public prosecutor who has worked on prominent murder and terrorism cases. He helped prosecute suspects in the 1993 Bombay bombings, the Gulshan Kumar murder case, the Pramod Mahajan murder case, and the 2008 Mumbai attacks. He was also the special public prosecutor in the 2013 Mumbai gang rape case, 2016 Kopardi rape and murder case. Ujjwal Nikam argued on behalf of the state during the 26/11 Mumbai attack trial.
Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar is a Sikh activist and a former professor. He was convicted by a TADA court in a 1993 Delhi bomb blast case that left nine people dead and injured 31. The Indian supreme court had confirmed his death sentence in a fractured and divided decision. His death sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court of India on 31 March 2014.
Dawood Ibrahim is an Indian mob boss, drug lord, and terrorist. He reportedly heads the Indian organised crime syndicate D-Company, which he founded in Mumbai in the 1970s. Ibrahim is wanted on charges including murder, extortion, targeted killing, drug trafficking, and terrorism.
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), intelligence agency of Pakistan has been involved in running military intelligence programs in India, with one of the subsections of its Joint Intelligence Bureau (JIB) department devoted to perform various operations in India. The Joint Signal Intelligence Bureau (JSIB) department has also been involved in providing communications support to Pakistani agents operating in Indian-administered Kashmir. The Joint Intelligence North section of the Joint Counter-Intelligence Bureau (JCIB) wing deals particularly with India. In the 1950s the ISI's Covert Action Division was alleged for supplied arms to insurgents in Northeast India.
Madhu Purie Trehan is an Indian journalist. She was also the co-founder and editor-in-chief of a digital media portal called Newslaundry.
Palanisamy Sathasivam is an Indian judge who served as the 40th Chief Justice of India, holding the office from 2013 to 2014. On retirement from his judicial career, Sathasivam was appointed the 21st Governor of Kerala from 5 September 2014 to 4 September 2019. Sathasivam is the second judge from Tamil Nadu to become the CJI, after M. Patanjali Sastri. He is also the first former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to be appointed the Governor of a state. He is the first Governor of Kerala to be appointed by the Narendra Modi Government.
Black Friday: The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts is a 2002 Indian non-fiction crime novel written by journalist Hussain Zaidi. It retraces the events that led to the 1993 Bombay bombings and the investigation that followed. It was first published by Penguin Books in 2002 and later in 2008. The novel was adapted into a feature film of the same name directed by Anurag Kashyap.