Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

Tiger Memon	Tiger Memon	D Company	India-Pakistan				20030804
	Tiger Memon	al-Qaeda affiliate					20010916

India-Pakistan

D-Company’s Mumbai module had planned targeted killing of Indian politicians

2022-05-15

[OneOndia] The NIA told the court that Shakeel was sending money and overseeing this module in Mumbai.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has arrested two accused in Maharashtra in connection with the D-Company

...the Dawood Ibrahim mob. Dawood's an international mobster allied with various terror groups including al-Qaeda. The Pak govt can't seem to catch him, despite having his address and phone number...
case. The arrested persons are Arif Abubakar Sheikh and Shabbir Abubakar Sheikh.

These persons are associates of Dawood Ibrahim and were involved in arms smuggling, narco terrorism, money laundering, circulation of fake Indian currency notes.

They were also involved in illegal activities of the syndicate and were indulged in terror funding in the western suburbs of Mumbai. They are closely associates with Dawood's right hand man, Chhota Shakeel who is operating an international syndicate from Pakistain. Shakeel is also involved in extortions, narcotics smuggling and terrorist acts in India.

The NIA told the court that Shakeel was sending money and overseeing this module in Mumbai. The primary objective of this module was to target politicians across the country. They were also told to incite terrorism in the country, the NIA said.

Earlier this week the NIA conducted raids at 24 locations in the Mumbai Commissionerate and five places in Mira Road Bhayandar Commissionerate on Monday.

The case on hand pertained to the criminal activities of international terrorist network of the Dawood Ibrahim Company or D-Company. The NIA said that the case involves Dawood Ibrahim and his associates including Haji Anees, Shakeel Sheikh alias Chhota Shakeel, Javed China, Tiger Memon.

They are in unauthorised possession/involved in acquisition of key assets for raising terror funds and working in active collaboration with international terrorist organization including Lashkar-e-Taiba

...the Army of the Pure, an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is banned, always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI...
(LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammad
...literally Army of Mohammad, a Pak-based Deobandi terror group founded by Maulana Masood Azhar in 2000, after he split with the Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin. In 2002 the government of Pervez Musharraf banned the group, which changed its name to Khaddam ul-Islam and continued doing what it had been doing before without missing a beat...
(JeM) and Al Qaeda (AQ), the NIA said.

The NIA during the raids seized incriminating material including electronic devices, documents of investments in real estate, cash and fire arms.

The NIA had in February registered an FIR after it was learnt that several of these persons were linked to Dawood and were raising funds to sponsor terror in the country.

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India-Pakistan

Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt gets 3 years jail for involvement in 1993 Mumbai bombings

2013-03-21

NEW DELHI: Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt will have to undergo a jail term of three years and six months after the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld his conviction in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case which it said was organised by underworld don Dawood Ibrahim and others with the involvement of Pakistan's ISI.

However, the apex court reduced to five years the six year jail term awarded to him by a designated TADA court in 2006, ruling out his release on probation because the "nature" of his offence was "serious".

53-year-old Dutt, son of the late Sunil Dutt and Nargis, has already spent one and half years in jail and was out on bail. Sunil Dutt was a long standing Congressman and was a Union minister.

Dutt was convicted by the TADA court for illegal possession of a 9 mm pistol and a AK-56 rifle which was part of the consignment of weapons and explosives brought to India for the coordinated serial blasts that killed 257 people and injured over 700.

Bringing to a closure the appeals by the convicts and the state in the case, a bench of justices P Sathasivam and B S Chauhan upheld the death sentence of Yakub Abdul Razak Memon, brother of one of the absconding main conspirators Tiger Memon and life sentences of 16 of the 18 convicts.

The death sentence of 10 others was commuted to life sentence by the court which directed that they will remain in prison till death.

The life sentence of one Ashrafur Rehman Azimulla was reduced to 10 years while Imtiyaz Yunusmiya Ghavte was set free by reducing the sentence to jail term already undergone.

"The circumstances and the nature of the offence is so serious that we are of the view that he (Sanjay Dutt) cannot take the benefit of provisions of the Probation of Offenders Act to release him on probation," the bench said.

"We reduce the punishment of six years to minimum of five years under the Arms Act," the bench said and directed him to surrender within four weeks.

Sanjay Dutt's lawyer Satish Maneshinde said he has spoken to the actor who told him that he was strong enough to go through whatever the court has asked him to undergo.

"He has accepted the judgement, he said adding "he will go through the verdict and will consider all the legal recourses available to him".

The apex court concurred with the conclusion arrived at by the designated TADA court saying that it had adopted the "correct procedure" while awarding the sentence to Dutt.

"We are in agreement with conclusion arrived at by the designated TADA court that had rejected the arguments of the appellant Sanjay Dutt," the bench said.

"We are of the view that the trial court adopted the correct procedure and the decision arrived at by it was correct," it said and directed Dutt to surrender within four weeks from today.

According to the CBI, RDX had come from Pakistan in boats and had landed in Dighy and Shekhadi coasts in Raigad district in January and February 1993. Besides, weapons had also landed and were collected by Tiger's men. One of the weapons was given to actor Sanjay Dutt by Bollywood filmmakers Samir Hingora and Hanif Kadawala.

The apex court modified the nine year jail term awarded by TADA court to Hingora to the jail term already undergone.

Hingora had supplied AK-56 rifles, magazines, cartridges and hand grenades, which were part of the illegal consignment to be used in the blasts, at Dutt's Pali Hill residence and has spent six and half years in jail.

Kadawala was shot dead in February 2001 by two unindentified men during the trial of the case.

The apex court upheld the five-year jail term awarded to Zaibunnisa Anwar Kazi, who also was found guilty of storing AK-56 rifles and hand grenades.

The court also upheld the conviction and five-year sentence of Yusuf Mohsin Nulwalla, a close friend of Dutt, who was held guilty of destroying the weapons which were kept at Dutt's house.

The punishment of two-year jail term of Kersi Bapuji Adjania, who was also sentenced for destroying weapons in Dutt's possession, was also upheld.

According to CBI, Nulwalla had picked up the weapons from Dutt's house and took them to Adjania and then destroyed them.

The court, however, dismissed Maharashtra government's appeal against the acquittal of Ajai Yash Prakash Marwah who was charged by the probe agency of keeping the pistol recovered from Dutt's residence while other weapons were destroyed by convicts Nulwalla and Hingora.

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India-Pakistan

Pakistan refuses to hand over Dawood, says Krishna

2009-07-31

[The News (Pak) Top Stories] India has been asking Pakistan to hand over 42 fugitives, including Dawood Ibrahim, but Islamabad has refused to cooperate, Indian Foreign Minister S M Krishna told the Rajya Sabha on Thursday.

Replying to questions, he said a list of 42 fugitives, both Indian and Pakistani nationals, including ones involved in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts and the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai, had been given to Islamabad.

Krishna said whatever evidence and dossier was given, Pakistan's refrain was that it was not enough and could not be proven in a court of law. He said Pakistan had denied the presence of dreaded criminals like Dawood Ibrahim, Tiger Memon, Chota Shakeel and Lakhbir Singh who were among the Indian nationals in the list.

"For Pakistani nationals, Pakistan has pointed to lack of extradition treaty and lack of evidence," he said. "We have made 11 futile attempts with Pakistan to conclude an extradition treaty," he said.

Pakistan has not responded positively to our proposals to conclude an extradition treaty, he said. "We have been impressing upon Pakistan that it is in the interest of both countries that we enter into a treaty of extradition," Krishna said. "The government is endeavouring to persuade Pakistan to develop a cooperative relationship with India."

Krishna said India would continue to improve relations with Pakistan despite Islamabad's reluctance. "In spite of Pakistan's reluctance to help us to improve our relations, India's endeavour will be to continue to impress upon Pakistan that we have to have good neighbourly relations," he said. "Our hope is that Pakistan will see sense in such kind of approach," he added.

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India-Pakistan

ISI may be hiding India's Most Wanted fugitive militant

2009-06-24

Denying that Maulana Masood Azhar, the founder of the pro-Kashmir jehadi group, Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), has been arrested from the Sialkot city of Punjab, the Pakistani authorities have said his whereabouts are unknown and he might have fled to the trouble-ridden Waziristan region. But some intelligence officials believe that Masood Azhar, who had to be released by India following the hijacking of an Air India plane in 2000, could be living under the protection of the Inter-Services Intelligence in the garrison town of Rawalpindi which also houses the General Headquarters (GHQ) of the Pakistan Army and those of the ISI.

Following the June 17 arrest of five JeM activists from Punjab's Sialkot district, there were rumours that among them was Azhar, whom the Indian government wants extradited. But Pakistani intelligence sources say a consensus exists in the establishment that Masood Azhar should not be handed over to India under any circumstances. The sources said the official stance of the Pakistani government remains that Azhar had abandoned his Bahawalpur headquarters following the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks and is still at large. However, some intelligence sources did not rule out the possibility of the JeM chief's moving to some ISI safe house in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, as had been the case with Maulana Fazlur Rehman Khalil, the ameer of the Harkatul Mujahideen, already renamed as Jamiatul Ansar,

The sources pointed out that earlier this month, the Indian government's efforts in the United Nations to place sanctions on Maulana Masood Azhar received a major setback, after London surprisingly joined hands with Beijing to block New Delhi's request for proscribing the JeM chief under the United Nations' Al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions resolution No 1267. The sources claimed that this would not have been possible had Britain and China not been persuaded by Pakistan government to do so. India had wanted Azhar to be included in the sanctions list just as the Jamaatul Daawa and its head Hafiz Mohammed Saeed along with other LeT operatives were proscribed after 26/11.

The Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) or "the Army of the Prophet Mohammad," is one of the deadliest militant groups operating from Pakistan and waging 'jehad' against the Indian security forces in Jammu & Kashmir. It was launched by Maulana Masood Azhar at the behest of the ISI in February 2000, shortly after he was released from an Indian jail, in exchange for hostages on board an Indian Airlines plane which was hijacked by five armed Kashmiri militants and taken to Kandahar in December 1999.

While resuming his activities in Pakistan almost immediately after his release, Maulana Masood Azhar announced the formation of his own militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammad, with the prime objective of fighting out the Indian security forces in Kashmir. Masood Azhar was the ideologue of another militant group, the Harkatul Ansar, which was banned in 1997 by the US State Department, due to its alleged link with Osama bin Laden. Therefore, the Jaish is ideologically an extension of the Harkatul Ansar which rechristened itself as Harkatul Mujahideen in 1998, a year after being banned.

In December 2008, almost a week after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, the Pakistani authorities placed restrictions on the movement of Masood Azhar by confining him to his multi-storied concrete compound in the Model Town area of Bahawalpur. The action was taken in the wake of Indian government's demand to hand over three persons to Delhi --Masood Azhar, Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon. India had sought their extradition by citing a 1989 agreement signed by Director General of the Central Bureau of Investigation and Director General of the Federal Investigation Agency which binds both the agencies to collaborate with each other to trace out the most wanted terrorists and criminals and hand them over to their respective counterpart. The Indian demand said that Masood Azhar was wanted for his alleged involvement in the 2001 attacks on the Indian parliament.

However, the Indian demand was followed by media reports that Masood Azhar has abandoned his Jaish headquarters in the Model Town area of Bahawalpur and temporarily shifted his base to the trouble-stricken South Waziristan region in the wake the mounting Indian pressure for his extradition. However, in the second week of April 2009, Masood Azhar was declared 'officially' missing from Pakistan.

A 13 January 2009 new report in Daily Times quoted official sources in Islamabad as having said that the Jaish chief has abandoned his headquarters in Bahawalpur and was missing now. Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik officially declared that Masood Azhar and Dawood Ibrahim were not in Pakistan adding that Islamabad would not provide protection and refuge to any criminal. However, Indian External Affairs Minister Paranab Mukherjee ridiculed Pakistan for denying the 'obvious presence' of the Jaish chief, saying: "India had several times got different information from Pakistan on Masood Azhar and it was not unusual to hear such denials from Pakistani officials".

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India-Pakistan

Jaish chief confined to his headquarters

2008-12-09

The Pakistani authorities have placed restrictions on the movement of Maulana Masood Azhar, the chief of the outlawed Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), by confining him to his multi-storeyed concrete compound in the Model Town area of Bahawalpur.

Well-placed official sources say Masood Azhar's activities have been restricted in the wake of the Indian government's recent demand to hand him over to New Delhi.

Adviser on Interior Rehman Malik said in Islamabad last week that India has given to Pakistan a list of three persons--Maulana Masood Azhar, Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon--for their immediate extradition.

Official sources say India has sought the arrest and extradition of Masood Azhar while citing a 1989 agreement signed by the director-general of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the director-general of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) which binds both the agencies to collaborate with each other, to trace out the most wanted terrorists and criminals and hand them over to their respective counterpart.

Maulana Masood Azhar is wanted by the Indian CBI for his alleged involvement in the 2001 attacks on Indian parliament which brought the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours to the brink of war. As a matter of fact, it is not for the first time that his movements have been restricted by the Pakistani authorities. Every time the Indian government demands his extradition, he is confined to his under-construction headquarters in Bahawalpur. Azhar had been serving time in an Indian jail for Kashmir-related militancy but had to be released by the Indian government in 2000 in exchange for passengers of an Indian airplane which had been hijacked by some Kashmiri militants and taken to Kabul. Soon after his release, he discarded the Harkatul Mujahideen (HuM) to launch the Jaish-e-Mohammad.

Since then, having gone through many ups and downs, especially in the wake of the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament and the 2003 suicide attacks on Gen Musharraf in Rawalpindi, the Jaish had been renamed as Khudamul Islam (KuI) and reorganised under the command of Mufti Abdul Rauf, the younger brother of Masood Azhar. The State Department had designated the Jaish as a foreign terrorist organisation in December 2001, making the Musharraf regime slap a ban on the outfit in January 2002. December 29, 2001 was the only time Masood Azhar was formally arrested by the Pakistani authorities following the parliament attacks. However, a three-member review board of the Lahore High Court ordered his release on Dec 14, 2002.

The second time he had to face the wrath of the establishment was in 2003 in the aftermath of the Rawalpindi suicide attacks on Musharraf, after it transpired that Mohammad Jamil, one of the two suicide attackers who tried to assassinate the first commando president of Pakistan, belonged to the Jaish. However, Masood tried to clear his position by maintaining that the bomber had already defected to the Jaish's dissident group--Jamaatul Furqaan, led by Maulana Abdul Jabbar alias Maulana Umar Farooq. However, the Maulana from Bahawalpur soon fell out of favour with the establishment in the wake of American allegations about his al-Qaeda links and because of the US belief that he, along with some other Jihadi leaders, had been providing logistical support to fugitive al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders.

As a matter of fact, following the January 2002 kidnapping and the subsequent murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl by Sheikh Ahmed Saeed Omar, close aide of Masood Azhar, the Americans had sought the custody of the Jaish chief, saying the US Department of Justice wanted to file charges against him for his involvement in the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight IC-814 (with an American citizen Jeanne Moore aboard). The American authorities had claimed that under the American law, they had the right to investigate crimes against their citizens committed anywhere in the world.

However, the Musharraf regime had turned down the US demand, saying he was not a hijacker and his incarceration in India had been illegal.

"Otherwise, he would have been tried and convicted by the Indian courts while he was behind bars." In other words, Masood Azhar could not be accused of any crime.

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India-Pakistan

Kashmiri separatists may be questioned over Mumbai attacks

2008-12-06

(AKI) -By Syed Saleem Shahzad - As US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met Pakistani leaders on Thursday, it was still unclear whether Islamabad would succumb to American pressure and detain leaders of a banned militant group linked to last week's terrorist attacks in India.

The sole gunman to survive the violent siege in which 188 people died in the Mumbai attacks (Photo) told Indian police interrogators that he was from Pakistan. He said that he and his fellow gunmen were trained at a camp there run by outlawed Kashmiri separatist group Lashkar-e-Toiba.

Lashkar-e-Toiba have denied any involvement in the attacks, while a previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahadeen claimed responsibility.

Pakistan has so far shown no intention of grilling alleged Lashkar-e-Toiba leaders, whom the Indians claim have renamed the group, Jamaat ud-Dawa. Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Zakiur Rahman are two of the names said to be linked to the attacks.

Informed sources told Adnkronos International (AKI) that training camps in Muzzafarabad, in Pakistani-administered Kashmir were immediately evacuated soon after Indian forces were placed on high alert after the Mumbai attacks last week.

Rice and Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mike Mullen, both visited the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, this week for meetings with top officials aimed at pressuring Pakistan to cooperate in probing the attacks.

Mullen and Rice separately met President Asif Ali Zardari and the Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani on Wednesday and Thursday and discussed Pakistan's crucial role in fighting terrorism.

While Pakistan has so far shown no intention of questioning the two Lashkar-e-Toiba leaders, Zardari gave assurances on Thursday that Pakistan would do everything possible to aid the investigations . However, AKI's sources maintained that the next 24 hours following Rice and Mullen's visit would be crucial.

Gillani's advisor on the interior, Rahman Malik, dismissed as "rumours" reports that India has submitted a list to Pakistan of 20 'most wanted' terrorists or that Pakistan has handed over any of these individuals.

Malik also denied that two underworld bosses wanted in connection with the devastating 1993 bombings in Mumbai that killed 250 people are hiding the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi.

"Neither Dawood Ibrahim nor Tiger Memon are in Pakistan, he said.

Indian police have accused Lashkar-e-Toiba of carrying out a previous attack in Mumbai in August 2003 that killed 55 people and injured 180.

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India-Pakistan

Six ex-Pak army officers guard Dawood: Aide

2008-08-22

MUMBAI: Dawood aide Karimullah Habib Khan is singing. A day after being arrested from Nalasopara, where he had assumed a new name and a new vocation, the man who shepherded the RDX consignment to their deadly end in March 1993 has spilled details of his boss' lifestyle in Pakistan.

Khan told the police that Dawood Ibrahim's palatial bungalow in the tony Clifton neighbourhood in Karachi is guarded by six retired officers from the Pakistan army. Khan, who was with the underworld don's brother Anees after he fled Mumbai in June 1993, said Dawood had also deployed 25 private security guards to protect himself and his family.

Going by Khan's statement to the police, in recent years, Dawood prefers to mostly remain indoors during the day. He stays with his wife and a son in the bungalow located on a two-acre plot. He moves around in a bullet-proof Land Cruiser and steps out mostly in the night, that too not without a convoy of 15 vehicles guarding him.

While Dawood and Anees stay in the Clifton area, his close aide Shakeel stays a kilometre away, according to Khan. Quoting Khan, a police officer said, "The bungalow is equipped with luxuries__a home theatre, servant quarters, a garden for children with high boundary walls, a pool centre and a swimming pool. There is everything that one can think of."

Dawood heavily relies on Chhota Shakeel although Anees is still part of his inner circle. All three stay separately in independent bungalows. Dawood runs his empire like a company and no one dares challenge his authority. Khan told the police that Dawood is only worried about his third brother Noora, who is mentally disturbed and picks up fights over petty issues.

Dawood's other brothers, Mustaqium and Humayun, who are based in Dubai, keep visiting him in Karachi and stay with him. Khan denied any knowledge about Dawood's extortion threats to Bollywood, but confirmed that Anees had ordered the killing of music magnate Gulshan.

Speaking about himself, Khan said that it was Ejaz Pathan who got him into the Dawood gang. He said that his father Habib used to work as a loader with the Bombay Port Trust in the late 1980s. Khan was operating as a petty scrap thief in the docks when he met Pathan, a silver smuggler.

Their trade skills so impressed absconding blast accused Tiger Memon that he assigned them the job of landing RDX on the Shekhadi coast. Khan said that immediately after the serial blasts, he fled to Dubai along with Anees and stayed there.

After the September 11, 2001 attack in the US, the Dubai government was under pressure following which the duo shifted to Pakistan.

Khan claimed that he used to do petty jobs and stayed in an outhouse in Anees's bungalow. "In 2004, they stopped paying Khan. They indicated that it was time for him to leave and he decided to move out. In 2006, he flew to Kathmandu and then sneaked into India using the land route," a police officer said.

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India-Pakistan

Lashkar takes over D-Company

2008-03-28

'D-Company' is now officially part of the Lashkar-e-Toiba's terror network, with Pakistan's notorious Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) getting Dawood Ibrahim to merge his gang with the fundamentalist terror organisation as part of a gameplan to crank up its anti-India campaign.

Sources in Indian agencies tracking ISI's moves confirmed the coming together of the two outfits and the danger that it poses to India.

"The underworld gang and the Lashkar jihadis have been knocked into a single entity and this has serious implications for India's internal security," a senior intelligence official told TOI on Thursday.

ISI's links with D-Company are old, going back to 1993 when Pakistan's external intelligence agency used Dawood and his henchmen to execute the March 12 terror attack on Mumbai in what marked the first instance anywhere of serial bombings. (TOI was the first to report the detention of Dawood, Chhota Shakeel and Tiger Memon by Pakistani authorities).

There has since been a shift in the dynamics of ISI-Dawood equations, reducing D-Company from being a useful ally to a group of individuals dependent on ISI to escape international law agencies.

Following the Mumbai blasts, Dawood along with his accomplices Chhota Shakeel and Tiger Memon fled to Pakistan. Pakistan has since shielded them from India and the new anti-terrorism sensitivities post-9/11 which saw Dawood being branded a global terrorist by the US.

But the hospitality has a tag attached to it: complete dependence for survival on ISI, which does not mind displaying its leverage vis-a-vis the once ruthless gang.

The merger will, inevitably, transform the character of Dawood's gang, which did not display any communal tendency before the serial bombings aimed against members of a particular community.

In fact, many of their business partners were non-Muslims like Raj Shetty. Chhota Rajan was also a senior member of the gang before splitting in protest against the serial blasts triggered by Dawood, Shakeel and the Memons.

"The serial blasts were essentially a retaliation for the January 1993 communal riots. But now there is a qualitative change with D-Company becoming part of a jihadi organisation like the LeT. Earlier, this gang's members were not religiously indoctrinated, but now they are. The motivation now is not money, but religion," a senior official said.

The joining of ranks with Lashkar, one of the most dangerous terrorist outfits which treats "liberation" of large tracts of India from "Hindu domination" as its religious obligation, can help ISI to further its subversive agenda.

Stints with Lashkar camps can morph Dawood's band of urban gangsters into well-armed and jihad-driven terrorists.

On the other hand, Lashkar benefits immensely from collaboration with D-Company which continues to attract recruits and has acquired financial muscle by venturing into mainstream commercial enterprises without letting go of its original money spinner, smuggling.

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India-Pakistan

Yakubs death sentence stayed

2008-01-29

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday stayed the execution of the death sentence awarded to Yakub Abdul Razak Memon, brother of the underworld don Tiger Memon, for his role in the 1993 Mumbai blasts.

A Bench consisting of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justices Tarun Chatterjee and R.V. Raveendran passed the order on Yakubs appeal challenging a TADA court judgment holding him guilty of arranging for finance for the conspiracy and distributing weapons.

The Bench also granted bail to Anjum Abdul Razak Memon, another brother of Tiger Memon, taking into consideration senior counsel Harish Salves submission that the petitioner, who was awarded life imprisonment, had already spent more than 12 years in jail.

It posted to February 5 hearing on the bail applications of six appellants, including two belonging to the Memon family who were awarded life imprisonment for conspiracy and other serious charges and one convict, who was awarded 10-year imprisonment.

Appearing for the Central Bureau of Investigation, Additional Solicitor-General Gopal Subramaniam submitted a chart indicating the nature of the offences of the eight appellants, the role they played, the period of sentence and the duration already undergone by each of them in prison.

While not opposing bail to Anjum Memon, counsel opposed bail to others.

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India-Pakistan

83-year-old gets life sentence for Mumbai blasts

2007-06-01

A court on Wednesday sentenced to life in jail an 83-year-old man named as one of the main conspirators in bombings, which killed 257 people in Mumbai in 1993. Dawood Phanse was one of the main people taken to Dubai to meet the alleged masterminds of the blasts, fugitives Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon, Judge PD Kode said. His age was the only reason why I have not given maximum punishment of death, he said. Phanse was also fined 4,900 dollars. After a decade of hearings, the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities court in Mumbai last December found 100 people guilty out of 123 accused and began sentencing earlier this month. More than 50 people, including government officials and policemen, have so far been given varying jail terms for their role in the conspiracy. The sentencing is expected to continue for weeks after one of the worlds longest trials ended last year. The Black Friday attacks were allegedly coordinated by Mumbais Muslim-dominated underworld in revenge for Hindu-Muslim religious clashes a few months earlier.

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India-Pakistan

Indian terror court to hand out blast sentences next month

2007-03-15

Just in case anyone thinks terrorism didn't exist before 9/11 ...

MUMBAI - An anti-terror court will next month sentence the 100 people convicted of plotting a day of bombings in 1993 that left 257 people dead in Indias worst terrorist attacks, lawyers said on Wednesday.

The court delivered its verdicts on the 123 accused in the Mumbai bombings last December after a decade of trials.

Judge P.D. Kode will commence the sentencing on April 19, chief prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam told AFP in Indias financial hub. We expect the process to be complete in two days.

One of the most high-profile convicts is Bollywood superstar Sanjay Dutt, who is out on bail. The 47-year-old Dutt was found guilty last November of illegal weapons possession but cleared of a more serious charge of conspiracy in the deadly bombings that included an attack on the citys stock exchange. The burly actor, who was freed on bail in 1995 after serving 18 months in jail, has insisted he was only armed to protect his family.

"We wuz afraid of a burglary."

The Black Friday attacks were allegedly organised by Mumbais Muslim-dominated underworld in revenge for deadly Hindu-Muslim religious clashes a few months earlier. The alleged masterminds of the blasts, Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon, are on the run. Indian investigators say they were aided by Pakistans intelligence service, but Islamabad has denied any link.

"No, no, certainly not!"

Judge Kode is hearing arguments filed by 69 of the convicts who want the terrorism charges against them dropped.

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India-Pakistan

Mumbai blasts: prosecution seeks death sentence for 44

2007-02-15

Mumbai: The prosecution on Thursday completed arguments on the quantum of sentence in the 1993 Mumbai blasts case and pleaded for death sentence for 44. It, however, submitted that Rubina Memon, Somnath Thapa and Imitiaz Gawte, be spared of death sentence as Thapa and Gawte were ill and Rubina was a woman.

CBI prosecutor N. Natarajan sought maximum punishment for the rest of the accused after dividing them in to three groups, as per the sections under which they were found guilty.

The 44 were found guilty under 120-b (criminal conspiracy) of the Indian Penal Code or Section 3 (2) (i) (terrorist act resulting in death) of the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act. Mr. Natarajan said the country had been facing terrorism for the last 20 years and the accused must be given maximum punishment as prescribed in relevant enactments, as this would prove to be a "deterrent." He cited several Supreme Court judgments and sought maximum punishment for the accused in the remaining two groups.

The second group includes accused convicted under Section 3(3) (terrorist activities not resulting in death) of the TADA Act and face a maximum of life imprisonment.

However, he prayed for lesser sentence for the two women in the group, Mubina Bhiwandiwala and Zaibunissa Qazi.

The third group comprises accused facing conviction under the Arms Act and Customs Act. It includes actor Sanjay Dutt.

Most of the accused were present in the court. Those who face death sentence include three brothers of prime accused Tiger Memon Yakub, Essa and Yusuf, as well as Mohammed Shoaib Ghansar, Asgar Yusuf Mukadam, Shahnawaz Qureshi, Abdul Gani Ismail Turk, Parvez Nazir Shaikh, Mohammed Iqbal Shaikh, Nasim Bharmare, Mustaq Tarani, Mohammed Farooq Pawale, Bashir Ahmed Usman Gani, Zakir Hussain Noor, Abdul Akhtar Khan, Firoze Amani Malik, Sakim Rahim Shaikh and Moin Qureshi and Eijaz Pathan.

The court fixed February 23 for statement by defence counsel on the quantum of sentence.

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