7/11 serial blasts still teaser for Mumbai Police

The Mumbai serial blasts was one of those unique cases where suspected Pakistan-based militant outfits used complete local network to execute the audacious attack.

On July 11, 2006, seven blasts were triggered within 11 minutes in trains running between the busy Khar and Borivali railway station.

Mumbai police’s elite Anti Terrorist Squad is still struggling to solve the puzzle as to who had actually carried out the heinous crime.

They also have no clue as to how the militants, suspected to be members of Pakistan-based Lashker-e-Taiba with local help from banned SIMI, manage to penetrate into the Mumbai transport system despite claims by the then Mumbai Police Commissioner A N Roy, now Director General of Police, that it had clinching evidence about involvement of Pakistan’s ISI and the conspiracy.

The much-hyped voluminous charge sheet has already started gathering dust as the case has slipped into legal wrangling with one of the accused knocking doors of Supreme Court challenging the decision of Mumbai Police to invoke Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA).

The Mumbai Police’s elite ATS, with the help of central intelligence agencies, picked up 13 people from different parts of the country for conspiring the near simultaneous explosions but nothing concrete could be brought out.

The charges against the 13 accused had been framed by the court in August 2007 itself but the commencement of the trial has been delayed because the first accused — Kamal Ansari — refused to engage any lawyer to defend him and later argued that all the accused wanted their trial transferred to another court.

And that’s not all. One of the accused even moved the Supreme Court and got the trial stopped this year.

The stay was granted by the Apex court after an accused, Zameer Ahmed Latifur Rehman challenged the constitutional validity of invoking the stringent MCOCA against him and other accused lodged in high-security Aurthur Road Prison.

The case became a puzzle for the police and sleuths as no evidence was found linking the perpetrators of the ghastly crime with either Pakistan or Bangladesh.

Even the 10,000 page charge sheet of Mumbai Police has not brought out any evidence that the conspiracy or directions were received from any other country. The charge sheet has named 15 people including top Lashker militant Azam Cheema as accused in the case.

According to Mumbai Police, a group of Pakistani people joined their Indian counterparts in Mumbai prior to the blasts and helped in assembling the explosives which consisted of lethal RDX and ammonium nitrate. The explosives were planted in the general first class compartments on the Western Railways.

The aftermath of the deadly explosions: Two of the injured are still lying in coma in city hospitals with their treatment fully sponsored by the Railways as many of the injured persons have reportedly not been compensated as per the assurances by the government.

The blasts have also led to a large scale upgrading of the surveillance systems as hundreds of electronic eyes keep a watch over the passengers across the suburban rail network while door frame metal detectors are being installed at various entry-exit points of the railway stations.