1993 Bombay bombings

The 1993 Bombay bombings was a series of 12 terrorist bombings in Bombay (now Mumbai), Maharashtra, on 12 March 1993. The single-day attacks resulted in 257 fatalities and 1,400 injuries. The attacks were coordinated by Dawood Ibrahim, leader of the Mumbai-based international organised crime syndicate D-Company.

On 21 March 2013, the Supreme Court of India, after 20 years of judicial proceedings, upheld the death sentence against suspected ringleader Yakub Memon while commuting the death sentences of 10 others to life imprisonment. Two main suspects in the case, Ibrahim and Tiger Memon, have not been arrested or tried. After India's three-judge Supreme Court bench rejected his curative petition, saying the grounds he raised did not fall within the principles laid down by the court in 2002, Yakub was executed by the Maharashtra government on 30 July 2015.

Background

In December 1992 and January 1993, there was widespread rioting throughout the nation following the demolition of the Babri Masjid, a five-century-old mosque, in Ayodhya, by a Hindutva mob. Some of the most notable riots occurred in Mumbai. Five years after the December–January riots, the Srikrishna Commission report found that 900 individuals had died and over 2,000 had been injured.

On 9 March 1993, three days before the bombings took place, a small-time criminal from the Bombay slum of Behrampada named Gul Noor Mohammad Sheikh (aka "Gullu") was detained at the Nag Pada police station. Gullu was one of the 19 men handpicked for weapons training by Tiger Memon, a silver smuggler whose office was burnt in the riots. Tiger became chief mastermind of the bombings and for training in the use of guns and bomb-making.