The Hindu : National : Over 50 years' RI for Mumbai blasts accused

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Saturday, Jul 10, 2004

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National

Over 50 years' RI for Mumbai blasts accused

By Our Special Correspondent

Shaeed, an accused in the 1998 Mumbai bomb blasts case, who has been sentenced, is trying to meet his relative outside the Sessions Court after the verdict in Mumbai on Friday. — PTI

MUMBAI, JULY 9. A sessions court here sentenced today 11 persons, including a Pakistani national, to about 53 years rigorous imprisonment for engineering serial bomb blasts on the railway lines of Mumbai in 1998, killing four and injuring about 30 others.

The punishment, under Section 150 of the Indian Railways Act, includes two life imprisonments, one for murder under IPC 302 and another for causing damage to or tempering with the railway lines with a view to causing deaths. Legal sources said that this was the first such conviction under the Railways Act.

The Additional Sessions Judge, V.L. Achalya, sentenced them to different terms in prison, ranging from three to 10 years, and decreed that the sentences would run consecutively and not concurrently. Thus the convicts would serve for over 50 years.

The judge, however, rejected the demand of the prosecutor, Ujjwal Nikam, for capital punishment for the convicts but directed the Maharashtra Government not to invoke its discretionary powers to condone the sentence and release them after 14 years or reduce the sentence.

Talking to The Hindu , Mr. Nikam said: "I am happy about the judgment. The court has ensured that the terrorists would spend the rest of their lives in jail by directing the State not to use its power to dilute the sentence later." He said Javed Gulam Hussein, a Pakistani ISI agent, had masterminded the blasts.

Apart from Hussein, others sentenced are Aftab Sayeed Ahmed, Asgar Kadar Shaikh, Afzal Abdul Hameed, Iqbal Mohammed Haneef, Jaffer Abdul Shaikh, Kadeer Mohammed Shafi, Shaikh Shahid Khalid Ansari, Shabeer Basheer Chavan, Farooq Yusuf Shaikh, and Mohammed Yakub Abdul Majeed.

Mr. Justice Achalya acquitted another Pakistani national, Shamshed Gulam Kadeer Hyder alias Raj, for want of sufficient evidence, and directed the Mumbai police to arrange for his safe deportation.

Ashfaq Sayed Ahmed, an approver in the case, had turned hostile during his deposition. He is now going to be prosecuted separately. Another accused, Akram Asgar Ali, had died during the prosecution.

The group had blasted the rail line between suburban Vikhroli and Kanjurmarg stations, between Malad and Goregaon, near Santa Cruz and had triggered bombs on platform No. 3 of Kandivali station and also near Virar during January and February 1998. The court had examined 45 witnesses in the case and did not admit the evidence about the Kandivali blast.

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