Mumbai: Five persons were on Wednesday sentenced to death and seven others imprisoned for life by a special court here for the serial blasts on Mumbai local trains nine years ago that left 189 commuters dead and over 800 injured.
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Abdul Wahid Shaikh, an accused who got acquittal in this case, said, “I was arrested in 2006 and acquitted in 2015”.
The bombs targeted an overcrowded suburban network that carries around seven million people a day.
However, Lashkar-e-Toiba commander-in-chief Azam Cheema, who is the main conspirator is still on run along with 14 others.
On September 23, the Special MCOCA court had reserved its order on sentencing in the case for today. Charge sheet of the ATS briefed that Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were made in a room in Govandi in suburban Mumbai and a few Pakistani nationals were also present during the bomb-making.
However, Gulzar Azmi, a representative of an organisation providing legal support to the convicts, said the trial was unfair and they would appeal in a higher court for justice.
Over the course of the nine-year trial, the court examined almost 250 witnesses.
Victims and eye witnesses of this disastrous Mumbai train serial bomb blasts recall it saying that it all occurred within a span of 10 minutes between Khar Road-Santacruz, Bandra-Khar Road, Jogeshwari-Mahim Junction, Mira Road- Bhayander, Matunga- Mahim Junction and Borivali.
During the prolonged arguments of almost three weeks on the quantum of sentence on the convicts, Special Public Prosecutor Raja Thakre had demanded death penalty for eight of the 12 convicts, terming them as “merchants of death”.
February, 2008: Supreme Court stays trial. However, in the Supreme Court, the death sentence was limited to Yakub Memon, who was hanged on July 30 this year. We shall appeal in Bombay High Court. Other death convicts Ehtesham and Asif too claimed that they were innocent and had been falsely implicated. The court has somewhere committed a mistake.
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I welcome the verdict because in this case the evidence was circumstantial and the prosecution was able to successfully prove the guilt of the accused. However, the death penalty imposed on five convicts would assume finality only after the Bombay High Court confirms the punishment awarded to convicts. “I am cent per cent sure that they (the convicts) will be acquitted by the higher courts”, he said.
