BOMBAY, 31 July 2003 — At least seven people were injured in Bombay yesterday as a strike over a deadly bus bombing paralyzed India’s commercial hub, halting public transport and affecting trade in the city’s financial markets.
The explosion which ripped through a bus in a Bombay suburb on Monday killed three people and wounded 50 in the latest in a series of blasts in the city since December.
Police said the bomb attacks were masterminded by the Lashkar-e-Taiba, an outlawed Pakistan-based militant group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.
The strike was called by the main opposition groups in Maharashtra state to protest what they said was the state government’s failure to ensure security. Bombay, the capital of Maharashtra, has a population of nearly 13 million.
Mobs of activists from the right-wing Hindu Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which rules in New Delhi, fanned out in the city damaging buses, blocking trains and yanking people out of private vehicles on busy highways.
“I saw groups of Shiv Sainiks stopping cars and asking people to go back home. They deflated some car tyres also,” said S. Rajendra, a commuter trying to get to work.
Police officials told Reuters a man was stabbed by a mob of Shiv Sena activists outside a train station while a commuter at another railway platform lost his right leg when he fell out of a train after BJP workers blocked the tracks.
“The man lay bleeding on the tracks. His leg was severed below the knee,” one policeman said.
A spokesman for Bombay’s public bus service said four drivers and a passenger had been taken to hospital bleeding after mobs pelted them with stones. Nearly three dozen buses were damaged.
“The strike is 100 percent successful. Everything has come to a standstill in the city,” said Subhash Desai.
The streets were deserted as most shops and restaurants were closed. Banks and offices reported thin attendance.
