More convictions in 1993 Mumbai blasts case but no justice yet for victims of riots that came before
The bomb blasts were tried by a special court. The communal riots in which 900 people died were investigated by just a powerless commission of inquiry.
On Friday, 24 years after the Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993, a special court convicted Abu Salem, Mustafa Dossa, Firoz Khan, Tahir Merchant and Riyaz Siddiqui for the serial explosions that killed 257 people. Another accused man, Abdul Qayyum, was acquitted of all charges.
Immediately after the blasts, the state government set up a special court under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act to hold trials in the blast cases. So far, the TADA court has convicted 106 people for their involvement in carrying out the bomb blasts. Yakub Memon, one of the convicts, was hanged in July 2015.
The 12 blasts rippled down the spine of Mumbai on the afternoon of March 12, 1993. Orchestrated by underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, the blasts were an act of revenge against the communal riots that swept through Mumbai in December 1992 and January 1993 after the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. At least 900 people were killed in the riots and more than 2,000 were injured – the majority of them Muslims.
However, the state government’s response to the communal riots was significantly different.
The Srikrishna Commission dilemma
After the riots of December 1992 and January 1993, the state government set up a Commission of Inquiry under Justice BN Srikrishna. The Commission spent more than five years investigating the events of the riots, and published a comprehensive report that proved damning for the Shiv Sena, the nativist party that was elected to the Maharashtra government in 1995. [. . .]FULL TEXT HERE: https://scroll.in/article/840881/more-convictions-in-1993-mumbai-blasts-case-but-no-justice-yet-for-victims-of-riots-that-came-before
