Fridays have been fateful for Mumbai. Fourteen years after ‘Black Friday’, the Tada court will begin handing out the punishments for the 100 convicted.
Fridays have been fateful for Mumbai. Fourteen years after 257 persons lost their lives on ‘Black Friday’ — March 12, 1993 — the Tada court will begin handing out the punishments for the 100 convicted on Friday. For the victims, the wait for justice has been torturous, and so it has been for the convicts — all of whom will be present in court on Friday. Twenty-three persons have been acquitted.
Judge PD Kode is likely to begin by pronouncing the jail sentences for five convicts — Rashid Alware, Sharif Adhikari, Yashwant Bhoinkar, Abbas Shaikhdare, Shahjahan Shaikhdare. Though accused of abetting the landing of arms, ammunition and explosives at the Raigad coast, the five were acquitted of Tada charges. Instead, Judge Kode convicted them under the Customs Act. The maximum punishment for their offence is three years. Two of the five convicts — Alware and Adhikari — have already spent three years in jail before being granted bail. Each of the other three spent about a year in jail.
Over the next weeks, the punishments will be scrutinised by the city’s collective conscience. The tenor in court will get grimmer as the prosecution has demanded death sentence for 44 convicted for being part of the blasts conspiracy. The 42 convicts, held guilty for abetting the conspiracy, face a maximum punishment of a life sentence. The four held guilty under the Arms Act (including actor Sanjay Dutt) face a maximum of 10 years in jail. The decision on their probation pleas will come along with their sentences. The CBI has sought lesser punishment for the three women, Rubeena Memon, Zaibunisa Kazi and Mubina Bhiwandiwala and Imtiyaz Ghavate and Somnath Thapa, who are suffering from AIDS and cancer respectively.
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