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Journalism of Courage
DECEMBER 1: Almost seven years after Tiger Memon wrought his act of revengeon Mumbai in retaliation to the two rounds of rioting in the city, pieces ofthe jigsaw are still falling into place in excruciating slow motion.
Investigators unravelling the tangled plot behind the 1993 bombings have nowbeen told that there were conspiracies within conspiracies being hatched andexecuted simultaneously by more than one underworld syndicate and that apartfrom Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Surat and other cities were also included in thediabolical plan.
Rajpuria has not only thrown a new spin on the investigations; he has alsoflummoxed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which has been handedan explosive tidbit and left with entirely new dimensions to explore.
If the statement offered by Rajpuria (52) is to be believed, the January 9,1993 consignment of arms, ammunition and explosives which landed at Dighi onthe Raigad coast was not used to bomb Mumbai on March 12 as hithertobelieved. Coordinated by him, they were also not directly connected to theFebruary 3 and 7 landings at Shekhadi, also on the Raigad coast. The latter,which were used for the serial blasts, had been coordinated by Memon’slanding agents, including Dawood Phanse and Dadabhai Parkar.
According to Rajpuria’s confession, made to Pramod Muthbhatkal, deputysuperintendent of the CBI’s Special Task Force, the agents in the Dighilanding owed allegiance to Dossa and were not linked to Memon. He alsoclaims that the day the consignment landed at Dighi, other consignments wereheaded for Porbander and other places along the Gujarat coast. Dossa’slanding agent Farooq Louta, had taken delivery of the Porbander consignment,which included the deadly RDX. A portion of the Dighi consignment had alsobeen redirected in two tempos to Surat and Raipur in Gujarat.
“I was reluctant to accept the delivery of arms and ammunition but I had todo it after speaking to Mustafa Majnun (Dossa’s brother) over a satellitephone,” Rajpuria states in his confession.
Tiger Memon and Mohammed Dossa, once allies, had parted ways over theaffections of a woman prior to 1993, and ever since their infamous feud,they never lost an opportunity to undermine and upstage each other. This,investigators believe, may have shaped the manner in which the serial blastswere executed. When Memon’s consignment of explosives was to land atShekhadi, Dossa is believed to have personally tipped off the Customs whileRajpuria is believed to have tipped off the then collector about Memon’sShekhadi consignment.
However, investigators are also painfully aware that there are no permanentfriends or enemies in the incestuous nether world of crime. This, itappears, could account for a larger conspiracy conceived jointly by morethan one crime syndicate.
“The bomb blasts were actually a large conspiracy with several strands ofother conspiracies intertwined in it.
"Mohammed Dossa, Tiger Memon and Dawood Ibrahim were all simultaneouslytrying to do something or the other in their own way.” Deputy InspectorGeneral of Police, Central Bureau of Investigation STF, S C Mathur, toldExpress Newsline, Mathur, however, refused to comment further sayingthe matter is sub-judice.
But hindsight, the CBI should know, is not a tool in the investigator’srepertoire.
