Coimbatore serial bomb blasts case verdict on Aug one

Coimbatore, July 27 (UNI) The Special Court, hearing the 1998 serial bomb blasts case here, today ordered the police to produce all the 167 accused in the case, including an approver, on August one when it would deliver the judgment.

Special Judge K Uthirapathy, however, said he would pronounce the sentence from August 6 in the case pertaining to the blasts, which rocked the city on February 14, 1998, leaving 57 people dead and 316 injured, besides damaging property worth over Rs 4.46 crore.

The police had arrested 168 accused in the case, of whom one Dustagir had died and another Riyaz ur Rahman had turned approver.

Police were still on a look out for the another five accused.

The first chargesheet in the case was filed on September 28, 1998, and the second and final chargesheet on May 5, 1999. The prosecution named 167 as accused one an accused, hailing from Karnataka, died in judicial custody.

The prosecution had accused extremist organisation Al-Umma of having hatched a conspiracy to explode the bombs in retaliation for the killing of 17 Muslim youths in communal riots on November 29, 1997, following the murder of traffic police constable R Selvaraj on November 28, 1997.

The prosecution had said the perpetrators of the crime had used improvised explosive devices on pushcarts, cycles, two-wheelers and cars, besides box bombs, bag bombs and pipe bombs.

While Al-Umma founder-leader Syed Ahmed Basha was named as the first accused, ''Amir'' of the banned outfit Mohammed Ansari was the second accused. Kerala-based People's Democratic Party (PDP) leader Abdul Nasser Maudhany was cited as the 14th accused.

The charges were framed against the accused in the special court on October 23, 2001, and the trial commenced on March 7, 2002.

UNI