MUMBAI, 25 July 2007 — Continuing to deliver sentences in the last phase of the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case, Judge P.D. Kode of the Terrorists and Disruptive Activities (TADA) Act court yesterday sentenced three more convicts to death and one to life imprisonment, taking the total of convicts sentenced to death so far to ten and 17 to life imprisonment. The three sentenced to death were Zakir Hussain Shaikh, Feroz Malik and Abdul Akhtar Khan.
The trio were found guilty of attending arms and weapons training camps in Pakistan organized by prime absconding accused Tiger Memon. They were also found guilty of conspiracy. The fourth convict Moin Qureshi was sentenced to life on the charge of lobbying hand grenades at the Fishermen Colony in central Mumbai that killed three and injured six people. Delivering the verdict, Judge Kode said that Qureshi was given lesser punishment because he was a minor at the time of the crime and got involved in the grenade incident in the final stages.
Regarding the trio that he sentenced to death, Kode said that their crime was that of terrorist act, a heinous one and equal to that of “waging a war” with India. The trio, he observed, had also gone to the Fishermen Colony with the sole intention of killing innocent people residing there.
Rejecting the defense counsel’s arguments that the convicts had resorted to the acts as a response of the 1991-92 riots following the demolition of the Babri Mosque, the judge said this arguments was not acceptable. “If terrorism in recent years is examined, it would be found that terrorist acts have caused extensive damage without rhyme or reason.”
“It is immaterial with whose blow innocent people died. They are all guilty. Evidence shows each threw grenades, each of them knew they were committing a terrorist act.” Kode said.
The judge in his verdict further said, “Violence is directed against individuals, while terrorism is directed against societies and communities at large. Terrorism is nothing but cowardice and deserves to be condemned. The terrorism act is not against a particular victim but society at large, the judge concluded.
As of yesterday, the court has sentenced 91 out of 100 convicts in the blasts case. The remaining nine convicts, including actor Sanjay Dutt convicted for illegal arms possession are yet to be sentenced. It is likely that Dutt would be the last to be sentenced on Friday.
