BOMBAY, 15 September 2006 — An Indian court yesterday found Mohammed Kasam Ghansar guilty of planting one of the bombs that ripped through Bombay in 1993, killing more than 250 people in India’s deadliest terror attack.
Twelve bombs placed in scooters, cars, jeeps and hotel rooms killed 257 people as they exploded over a two-hour period on March 12, 1993, in India’s commercial and entertainment capital.
Ghansar, 42, who has been held without bail since his arrest 13 years ago, was accused of leaving an explosive-laden scooter outside Bombay’s crowded Zaveri Bazar.
The blast at the market killed 17 people. He could face the death penalty. Before his arrest, he worked as a salesman in a business activity that specialized in black-market goods.
Security was tight around the court for the verdict, which comes after two major bomb attacks in western India in the past two months that killed more than 200 people.
After Ghansar’s conviction Judge Pramod Kode announced he would not hand out any more verdicts yesterday. Kode said verdicts would be handed out in groups and sentencing for all those convicted will be pronounced afterward — a process likely to take at least two months. A total of 123 men and women, most of them Muslims, are accused of involvement in the bombings.
Seven other defendants — Asgar Mukadam, Abdul Turk, Parvez Sheikh, Bashir Khairulla, Dawood Phanse, Mohammed Farooq Pawale and Sharif Parkar — also are accused of planting bombs and had been awaiting verdicts. It was not clear when proceedings against them would resume.
While Ghansar was convicted in the bombing, the court found him innocent of helping to smuggle the explosives into India and of aiding alleged mastermind Tiger Memon in fleeing the country.
Later yesterday, Kode heard arguments from four members of the Memon family who were convicted Tuesday of conspiring in the plot and providing the financing for the blasts. The four and their defense attorneys pleaded for shorter jail terms, saying they had inadvertently gotten involved in the case.
“I had nothing to do with the blast. It’s a wrong charge against me. My life ended after the 1993 blasts,” Yakub Memon told the court. “We surrendered before the police, instead they’ve falsely showed it as an arrest,” Yakub said, as he pleaded for a shorter sentence.
His brother, Essa Memon, accused of allowing his house to be used by the planners, said, “This is all wrong. It’s a family-owned house, I didn’t own it individually.”
He told the judge he had a brain tumor and would not be able to withstand an extended jail term.
However, public prosecutor, Ujjwal Nikam, insisted the defendants were guilty. “They are not speaking the truth. We have the facts before us and we have the evidence to show they are guilty,” Nikam told the judge.
One of India’s lengthiest trials, the prosecution began on June 6, 1995, and hearings ended in January 2003 after 686 witnesses gave testimony that filled 13,000 pages. The delay in the judgment was largely over procedural matters.
