BOMBAY, 27 August 2003 — Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani blamed Pakistan for the Bombay bombings as the death toll from the attacks rose to 65 yesterday.
Advani visited the two blast sites in southern Bombay, India’s financial capital, and told reporters: “Our neighbor’s war on terror against us is not aimed at Jammu and Kashmir alone ... the blasts were aimed at destabilizing every part of India.”
A Bombay police official told reporters that over 200 of the injured were still in hospital and 12 of them were in critical condition.
On Monday, Advani blamed the attacks on two banned Islamic groups: the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) and the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Yesterday he said Pakistan was angry at India because of India’s continuing progress over the past 50 years in areas such as information technology, its booming economy and its record of being a secular nation that accepts all religions and ways of life.
Advani alleged that several Muslims responsible for the 1993 Bombay blasts were in Karachi and the Pakistan government had consistently refused to extradite them.
He demanded that Pakistan hand over 19 people on a most-wanted list issued by India during the 18 months of tensions between the countries which have only recently eased.
“If Pakistan does this, only then will I accept their condemnation, which was issued yesterday, as honest — otherwise it is a mere formality,” Advani said.
But Pakistan said it has “already made it clear that the suspects are not on its soil.”
“India has so far not provided any evidence about the presence of Indian suspects in Pakistan,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Pakistan also dismissed the charges of terrorism as “baseless and irresponsible” and said such accusations were detrimental to the current detente between the two South Asian nuclear rivals.
Reports said several people had been arrested, but Bombay’s Joint Commissioner of Police Ahmed Javed said several people were being questioned but had not been detained or arrested.
Police questioned the driver of the taxi that exploded at the Gateway of India, who survived because he had gone to eat lunch.
The driver said his taxi was hired for the day by two men who said they wanted to see the sights. They were accompanied by two women and a child. The group got out near the Gateway for lunch, leaving a bag in the taxi.
The driver of the second taxi that exploded in the crowded Zaveri Bazar area — the center of the city’s diamond and gold trade — died along with the passenger.
Most of the traders and jewelers in Bombay are from the western state of Gujarat. Police suspect the attack and others on Bombay trains, buses and railway stations since December last year could be a backlash against violent communal riots in Gujarat last February, in which an estimated 3,000 people — mainly Muslims — died.
The Maharashtra government has also linked the blasts to the Gujarat riots.
A nationwide red alert followed Monday’s blasts, with stringent checks at airports, bus depots, railway stations, places of worship, monuments and government buildings.
Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray blamed the state government and the police for the blasts, accusing them of negligence. He also linked the bombings to the Archaeological Survey of India report on Monday which said a medieval temple may have existed at the Babri Mosque site. “The authorities should have realized that there will be repercussions of this report but they failed to wake up from their slumber,” Thackeray said.
