'93 blasts sentencing begins today

Mumbai: The designated TADA court that heard the 1993 Mumbai blasts case will begin sentencing the accused from Friday.

On Day One, the court will hand out the quantum of punishment to the first five of those convicted in the case.

They include fishermen who had abetted terrorists in landing explosives on the Raigad coast and were all convicted under the Customs Act.

The sentencing is expected to be given out in batches and the court is expected to hand out the minor sentences first before moving on to the major convictions.

At the last hearing, the court formally acquitted 23 of the 123 accused in the bomb blasts case.

They were formally set free om May 9.

However, of the 23 acquitted, three - Hanifa Abdul Razak Memon, matriarch of the Memon family who is physically unfit, Devidas Ghule and Mohammed Ahmed Mansoor Shoaib Ahmed - were not present in court.

The names of the others who have been set free are - Ashfaq Havaldar, Moinuddin Abdul Qadar, Shakeel Shahabuddin Shaikh, Anant Bhoir, Fasal Rehman Abdul Khan, Ismail Patel, Krishna Mokal, Krishna Pingle, Manohar More, Mansoor Ahmed Qureshi, Ruksana Zariwala, Ismail Qadri, Shaikh Babulal Kasam Shaikh, Sultan-e-Romgul, Ajay Marwah, Abdul Aziz Qadar, Mohammed Iqbal Ibrahim and Mohammed Ibrahim Khan.

THE BLASTS CASE
	Sentencing will be the final chapter in 14-year-long case. Special TADA court began delivering verdicts in September.
	The serial blasts on March 12, 1993 had claimed more than 257 lives and left thousands injured.
	While the gory sights of death and destruction at the Air-India building in the posh Nariman Point area, at Bombay Stock Exchange and at Century Bazaar in Worli have since been forgotten, the trial has dragged on and on.
	The investigations and trial proved too voluminous. Till the end, the prosecution presented approximately 43,000 pages as part of its chargesheet and evidence.
	The court recorded more than 13,000 pages of oral evidence, more than 7,000 pages of documentary evidence and secured 135 confessions and 686 witness statements.
	Separate trials of Abu Salem, Riyaz Siddiqui and Mustafa Majnoo were ordered. The main accused - Dawood Ibrahim, Chhota Shakeel, Anees Ibrahim, Mushtaq Memon, and Tiger Memon - are among the 35 others, who are yet to be brought to book.
	During the protracted trial, two accused - including Samajwadi Party leader Abu Azmi - were discharged by the court.
	The CBI had taken over the investigation soon after the blasts and filed its first chargesheet in November 1993 itself. At least 30 accused have been in jail ever since the blasts occurred in 1993. Some of the witnesses examined by the prosecution turned hostile.
	Sanjay Dutt Angle: Film actor Sanjay Dutt was charged with possessing an AK-56 rifle and later destroying it with the help of his friends. However, the actor denied the charge by retracting his statement to the police.
	On August 10, the designated TADA judge P D Kode had begun dictating the verdict and had said that court would pronounce judgment on September 12.