Salem gets just life term
A special Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) court on Thursday handed over death sentence to Tahir Merchant and Firoz Khan, convicts in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts case. The special court has also sentenced extradited gangster Abu Salem and Karimulla Khan to lifetime imprisonment, while Riyaz Siddiqui has been awarded 10 years of rigorous imprisonment.
Salem was extradited from Portugal in 2005 and cannot be sentenced to death because of an Indian guarantee to the Portuguese government. Accused of transporting weapons from Gujarat to Mumbai, he was arrested in Portugal in 2002 and seen as one of the main conspirators. It had been also established that Salem delivered weapons to actor Sanjay Dutt, who was later convicted and served a jail term for keeping AK-56 rifles, 250 bullets and some hand grenades at his residence.
The special court has imposed a fine of nearly Rs 10 lakh each on Firoz, Kar-imulla and Tahir while Salem has been asked to cough up Rs 8.50 lakh. In case they fail to pay, they will have to serve additional rigorous imprisonment.
Special judge Justice Govind Sanap had heard arguments on the quantum of sentence for more than two months. The five convicts were sentenced after being found guilty of various charges, including murder, attempt to murder, conspiring to execute a terrorist act, concealing terrorists and commission of terrorist act. They have been also found guilty of being active members of a terrorist organisation, destroying public property, possession of arms and explosives etc.
Meanwhile, Salem has moved a plea seeking his transfer from a jail in Maharashtra to Uttar Pradesh or Delhi. He has claimed that he is ‘unsafe’ in the State and cited two failed life attempts to buttress his contention. He wants to move to UP or Delhi as he thinks he would be ‘safe’ there.
Apart from this, Salem, who had moved the Lisbon court last month challenging his conviction in the blasts case, is now expected to produce the copy of the judgement sentencing him before the foreign court.
"As per the Extradition Treaty between IndiaPortugal, the maximum sentence permissible to him is 25 years, since the life imprisonment and death penalty are banned in Portugal where he was first arrested" — Deepak Salvi Special Public Prosecutor
It may be recalled that while convicting the five, in the month of June, Justice Sanap had observed, “It can be said that the accused willfully and intentionally participated in and executed the conspiracy designed to teach Hindus a lesson. This conspiracy was hatched to take revenge on the Indian government and Hindus for the atrocities meted out to the Muslim community after the demolition of Babri masjid and the 1992 riots in Mumbai and Surat,” Justice Sanap added. This is the second part of the judgement on the 1993 blasts that had 24-years ago brought Mumbai on its knees by killing nearly 257 innocents and injuring 713 others. The first half of the verdict was delivered way back in 2007 by the special judge, Justice Pramod Kode, who had convicted 123 accused.