India's Supreme Court Thursday gave its final verdict in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case, upholding the death sentence of one of the main convicts and ordering leading Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt to go back to jail, more than 20 years after the explosions killed 257 people and injured over 713 others.
The apex court upheld Yakub Abdul Razak Memon's death sentence while commuting the death sentences of 10 other convicts to life. The court also reduced Dutt's six-year prison term to five in the case but upheld the life sentences of 16 out of 18 other convicts in the case. All those sentences were given by a special Indian anti-terror court in 2006.
In fact, the Bollywood actor in his fifties has been on bail since 2007 after he appealed against his original sentence of six years given by the special Indian anti-terror court which had convicted him in 2006 of buying weapons from bombers who attacked Mumbai.
The apex court asked Dutt to surrender to authorities within four weeks to serve the remainder of his sentence of three-and-a- half years. He had spent 18 months in jail after his conviction by the special court under the Arms Act in 2006 till he got bail the next year.
The Supreme Court clearly pointed Pakistan's hand behind the serial blasts, saying the management and conspiracy of the explosions were done by underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and others in Pakistan, and its intelligence agency ISI was also involved in carrying out the strikes.
"Yakub Memon and all absconding accused including Dawood Ibrahim were archers and rest of the accused were arrows in their hands," the Supreme Court said as it also blamed the Indian police, the customs department and coast guards for failing to prevent the blasts.
The 1993 Mumbai blasts were a series of 13 bomb explosions which ripped apart India's financial capital on March 12. The single-day coordinated attacks were the most destructive bomb explosions in Indian history.
India claims the attacks were coordinated by Dawood Ibrahim, the don of the Mumbai-based international organized crime syndicate named D-Company. Ibrahim, said to be in Pakistan, is believed to have ordered and helped organize the bombings through one of his subordinates Tiger Memon who is also the elder brother of Yakub Memon.
