Author: Viju B
Publication: The Times of India
Date: July 28, 2007
Former police commissioner A S Samra, who led the investigation into the 1993 bomb blasts, spoke out against the Congress-led central government of the early 1990s for forcing police to drop Section 121 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) against the accused.
"We had the sanction of the state home department to append this section, accusing people of waging against the nation, and this could have got the accused a much harsher sentence. But the then central government (it was a Congress government led by the late P V Narasimha Rao) did not want to use this section against the accused,'' Samra told TOI on Friday. Samra said this exclusion proved costly for Mumbai Police, which investigated the case thoroughly and closed the case within six months after nailing most of the culprits. "We completed the investigation in record time. But, unfortunately, the case dragged on for over a decade,'' he said. But Samra felt the judgement was good.
Samra said the Memons, in collusion with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, were actually waging a terror war against the the country. "We had found a marking material which mentioned Lahore on the RDX. The Memons had tried to scrub the letters off. But we could see it using a magnifying glass,'' Samra said. Having handled Thane before, he had in-depth knowledge of the outskirts of Mumbai and could connect the chain of events that began from landing of RDX on the Raigad coast. He also had a team of officers, comprising deputies like Y C Pawar, M N Singh and Rakesh Maria, who helped in cracking the case in six months. Samra is also disappointed by the fact that the promised Rs-10-lakh reward for his team of officers never reached them. "Then chief minister Sharad Pawar promised at a police function that a reward of Rs 10 lakh would be given for cracking the case. But later it was decided that the reward would be given only after the verdict was pronounced,'' he added.
Samra's deputy then and another former police commissioner, M N Singh, said the investigations had revealed that Yakub Memon dealt with the financial transactions and deposited Rs 60 lakh in a cooperative bank which was to be given to the accused in the case. "He had also arranged for tickets for the accused to go abroad and get training in using arms and explosives,'' Singh said.
viju.balanarayanan@timesgroup.com