NEW DELHI: Indian police said on Tuesday that an explosion in a busy Delhi market place last month was planned by an Indian underworld gang lord and his associate who allegedly masterminded a series of 1993 explosions in Bombay. On May 21, a car bomb exploded in Delhi’s bustling Lajpat Nagar marketplace, killing 13 people and injuring 38.
“The suspects under interrogation for the Lajpat Nagar bomb case said Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon provided them with economic support and RDX (explosive) for the bombing,” the spokesman said. He Goole one of the eight arrested suspects as saying Dubai based Ibrahim and Memon were planning to carry out similar explosions in other Indian cities.
On May 22, a bomb exploded on a bus in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan, killing 14 passengers and injuring 30. Investigators said the two bombings were probably planned by the same group. In 1993, more than 260 people were killed in Bombay when 13 powerful bombs exploded in quick succession in the heart of India’s financial capital.
Police have accused Ibrahim of planning and funding the Bombay explosions, and Memon is one of the prime suspects, Police said both are believed to be in Pakistan. Police said the blasts were a retaliation by Muslims for two outbreaks of riots in December 1992 and January 1993, which followed the demolition of an ancient mosque by Hindu zealots. More than 2,000 people, most of them Muslims, died in the riots.
Indian authorities have said the explosives used in the Bombay blasts were supplied by Pakistani intelligence groups. Islamabad has denied the accusation. Two Kashmiri separatist groups claimed responsibility for the Delhi blast in May; More than a dozen groups are Waging 4 six year old separatist revolt in Jammu and Kashmir, mostly Hindu India’s only Muslim majority state.
Article extracted from this publication >> June 26, 1996
