A special court has sentenced to death five of the twelve people convicted for the 2006 Mumbai serial train blasts that killed 188 people and injured 829 others. The sentences come two weeks after the 12 were found guilty.
A Special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act court judge, Yatin Shinde sentenced to death Ehtesham Sidduiqui, Asif Khan, Faisal Shaikh, Naveed Khan and Kamal Ansari, for planting the bombs on the trains. Tanveer Ansari and Mohammed Ali, who provided the premises in Govandi for assembling the bombs, and Sajid Ansari, who made the timers and the electric circuits used to set off the bombs were given life sentences. Special Public Prosecutor Raja Thakare demanded they be sentenced to life until the end of their lives and in no case for less than 60 years.
In his final arguments, Thakare said none of the accused presented any mitigating circumstances that qualified them to seek leniency, not their ages, not their educational qualifications nor their family situation and the conditions during their pre-trial incarceration. Defendant Yug Chaudhary referred to alleged mastermind LeT operative Azam Cheema as the architect of the crime and the accused as mere labourers. Pointing to convict Zameer Shaikh, the defence said that in his confession he had said that while first being indoctrinated, he had said that killing innocent people was wrong. “However, continuous indoctrination made him change his mind,” he said.
Calling them “merchants of death”, Thakare sought death penalty for eight of them. “Thinkers pose a question and even public cry is that why honest taxpayers should be burdened into paying for the convicts' maintenance and upkeep while they are imprisoned for the next 40-50 years of their lives.”
