ON January 27, Al Umma founder S.A. Basha and 22 others were convicted and sentenced to varying terms of imprisonment for having stored explosives in various places in and around Chennai immediately after the serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore on February 14, 1998. As many as 58 persons were killed in the blasts (Frontline, April 24, 1998). L. Rajendran, Judge of the Poonamalee Special Court for bomb blast cases, sentenced Basha to four years' rigorous imprisonment. There were 24 accused in the case; one of them, Rafiq alias Mohammed Raffiq, was acquitted of all charges. The convicted included two women: Ayesha alias Sangeetha and Arifa Begum, both aged 24.
According to the Crime Branch-Criminal Investigation Department (CB-CID), the blasts in Coimbatore "were planned and executed by the fundamentalist outfit Al Umma, and masterminded by its leader S.A. Basha in retaliation for the killing of 19 Muslims in Coimbatore on November 30/December 1, 1997."
In March 1998, police seized large amounts of improved explosive devices, explosives, steel boxes for making bombs, revolvers, knives and so on from various places in and around Chennai - Vadapalani, Vepery, Tambaram and Poonamalee. Gunnybags containing about 100 kg of explosives were recovered from two tanks near Tambaram. A shopkeeper at Poonamallee, on seeing the photos of persons arrested in connection with the Coimbatore blasts, informed the police that Mohammed Hassan (one of the accused) had given him a gunnybag for safekeeping, telling him that it contained imported combs. The police found in it 211 gelatin sticks.
The explosives were to be used to blow up important buildings in Chennai, including the Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) building and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) office. The CB-CID filed a single consolidated charge-sheet on September 15, 2000, for four cases, called the Chennai explosives seizures cases, pertaining to these seizures. The key accused included Basha, Tajudeen, vice-president of Al Umma, Zakir Hussain and Mohammed Basith.
The cases became sensational because the police were after Ayesha and her husband, D. Ibrahim Gani alias Mohammed Ibrahim, who were absconding for two years. The Tamil press went to town about Sangeetha, who converted to Islam and renamed herself Ayesha. The press alleged that Ayesha was to become a human bomb in one of the Al Umma operations. A squad of the Special Division, CID, arrested them Ayesha and her husband from Bihar on March 29, 2000. They were found, along with their male child, in the Bettiya district under the assumed names of Tahira and Abdullah. Ayesha and Mohammed Ibrahim were sentenced to four years' rigorous imprisonment on four counts each, but the sentences are to run concurrently.
Special Judge Rajendran said the prosecution proved that there was a conspiracy to blow up the buildings, which was evident from the seizure of explosives. Basha and 12 others were sentenced to four years' R.I. on March 8, 2001, in another case relating to the seizure of explosives at Triplicane, Chennai in 1998. The trial in the cases against Basha and others for the serial bomb blasts in Coimbatore is under way.
T.S. SubramanianCOMMents
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