Judgement of bomb blast case to commence on Aug 1:Judge

Coimbatore, July 12 (UNI) The Bomb Blast Special Court Judge K Uthirapathy today announced that the judgement for the 1998 serial bomb blast case would commence on August one.

The blasts which rocked the city on February 14, 1998 left 57 people dead and 316 injured, besides damage to property worth over Rs 4.46 crore.

Police arrested 167 accused, out of which one Dustagir died and another accused Riyaz ur Rahman became an approver. Police were on the look out for another five accused in the case.

The first charge-sheet was filed on September 28, 1998 and the second and final on May five, 1999. It listed 12 blasts on February 14 and one each on February 15 and 19,1998. The prosecution named 167 as accused while one accused from Karnataka died in judicial custody.

The prosecution accused Al-umma of having hatched a conspiracy from November 30, 1997 to February 13, 1998 as retaliation for the killing of 17 Muslim youths in the communal riots on November 29, 1997, following the murder of a traffic police constable R Selvaraj on November 8, 1997.

The prosecution said they used improvised explosive devices on pushearts, cycles, two-wheelers and cards, besides box bombs, bag bombs and pipe-bombs.

The prosecution named founder-leader of Al-Umma Syed Ahmed Basha as first accused, followed by 'Amir' of the banned outfit Mohammed Ansar as second accused. The prosecution also named Kerala-based People Democratic Party(PDP) leader Abdul Nassar Maudhani as 14th accused.

The charge had combined 43 various occurrences into one and have 17,000 pages with 2,435 witnesses, of which the court examined 1300 and 1731 material exhibits and 480 material objects were marked before the court. The defence marked five witnesses and 106 defence exhibits during the trial.

After the charges were framed against the accused before the special court on October 23, 2001, the trial for this case had commenced on March seven, 2002. The cross-examination of witnesses will be completed on January 21, 2008.

UNI