S P E C I A L R E P O R T S

BOMBAY BLASTS

The Conspiracy UnravelsIn piecing together the plot, investigators confirm the key part played by Dawood Ibrahim

and find that Pakistan's role went way beyond merely training the saboteurs

By M. RAHMAN and RAHUL PATHAK

THREE months after a series of bombs rained fire anddeath over Bombay, the smoke-screen that had hungover the conspiracy is beginning to lift. The officials who

had spent their days and nights scratching for evidence andsifting for clues are now getting a glimpse of not just themechanics of the operation but its logistics and planning aswell. And as the evidence gathered by the Bombay Police iswoven into the mass of information lying with the intelligenceagencies, many of the theories which were bandied aboutimmediately after the blasts need to be radically revised.j[ The explosives were neither American left-overs in Af-ghanistan, nor surplus stock in the Pakistani bomb-yards.Dawood Ibrahim was not merely a shadowy figure pullingremote strings from distant shores, but an active participant inthe operation. The conspiracy, investigators now surmise,was aimed at stirring up communal violence and polarisingthe country. It was a Pakistani national who arranged for theRDX consignment that devastated Bombay, from an Austriancompany. The bomb blasts were actually planned to takeplace in late April around Shivaji Jayanti, but Tiger Memon

advanced the operation to March 12.These chunks of information are the intangible gains of an

intensive investigation. The tangible trophies are no lessimpressive. The Bombay Police has already arrested 103people involved in the blasts and seized enough arsenal toequip an army platoon—63 AK-56 rifles, 40,000 rounds ofammunition, over 450 hand grenades, more than 3.5 tonnesof RDX plastic explosive and 1,100 detonators. Their counter-parts in the Maharashtra State Police have, simultaneously,arrested 70 people, including some policemen and customsofficials for their involvement in the landing of explosives andweapons on the Konkan coast.

New revelations have surfaced following the arrest of twokey conspirators. They are Mulchand Shah, a major havalaoperator through whom Memon procured his funds, andMohammed Usman, an exporter who, investigators say, ispart of the inner circle of saboteurs. Shah admits arrangingRs 6 crore from abroad for Memon to set his scheme rolling.Apart from Bombay, Surat and cities in Uttar Pradesh werealso targeted for bomb attacks. Says Amarjeet Singh Samra,police commissioner of Bombay: "We now have a muchclearer picture of the entire operation. It basically involved a

NEW FINDINGSti A smuggler arrested for the blasts has admitted that he

was taken by Tiger Memon to Dubai to meet Dawood forinstructions on landing the explosives.

I 2. Interpol has traced the origin of the RDX to an Austrian firm.

The mart who arranged the consignment has beenidentified as a Pakistani who once worked for the Austrian firm.

4, The RDX never landed in Dubai but was trans-shipped 30km off the Pakistan coast to Raigad. A senior customs officialinvolved was arrested.

5. Grenades that arrived for rioting were made by a Pakistani firm.

<S» Memon's three gang members, who had the charge ofexecuting the blasts, have been identified. They fled via Nepal.

Twelve detained persons have provided details of training inPakistan for the operation. They were among the 35 who went there.

- The havala operator who transferred funds to finance theblasts from abroad has been arrested.

9. The wider conspiracy was aimed at arming saboteurswith weapons and grenades to systematically organise riotsand kill VVIPS.

1O. Detailed information has been passed on to the US for thepurpose of getting Pakistan declared a terrorist state.

42 I N D I A T

Anwar Ahmed and..,

hardcore group led by Tiger Memon, and a larger peripheralgroup responsible for financing, transporting, and so on."

Usman has testified that the first landing of AK-56 riflesand hand-grenades took place on January 9 in Raigad district,south of Bombay along with a consignment of silver. Thiswas the time when unprecedented communal violence spon-sored by the Shiv Sena was at its height. The Sainiks wereexacting revenge for the killing of Hindus on the streetsof Muslim-majority areas by gangsters acting as agents pro-vocateurs. This was exactly the way that Memon's gang andtheir foreign sponsors wanted and, indeed, expected them toreact in anticipation of a wider communal backlash through-out the country.

IN another breakthrough, the police have picked up 10 meninvolved in the provocative killings on January 6 and 7. SaysSamra: "In January, the conspirators made a much smaller

investment (of arms and violence), but the Sainiks who riotedplayed right into their hands.'' Encouraged by the response, theconspirators were fully confident of the outcome of their grandstrike in which they wanted to sabotage oil, naval andgovernment installations and eliminate various VIPS once thecommunal disturbances they anticipated had begun.

The conspirators moved on two fronts—arranging forthe explosives and recruiting the saboteurs. Simultaneous-ly, firearms were being smuggled tofollow the explosions with an evendeadlier result in the guise of rioting.Tiger Memon and Dawood Ibrahimworked in tandem to ensure that every-thing went smoothly.

The original theory was that the RDXused in Bombay was of Czech or USorigin. It was analysed without muchhope, as establishing either of thesebrands would have proved nothing.There is so much of these two brandsin circulation that it would havebeen impossible to trace the particu-lar consignment and the route it tookto Bombay.

Unexpectedly, with Interpol's help,the investigators struck gold. When anexplosive is analysed on a spectograph.it shows different 'bands' and 'ribbons'for each manufacturer. These are likefingerprints that can only belong to aparticular brand. The manufacturerscan distort or erase these 'ribbons' inthe explosive to muddy the trail whenthey are used for covert and clandes-tine operations.

The fingerprint of the RDX usedin Bombay stood out loud and clear.This particular brand had come froman Austrian manufacturer, accordingto investigators. As it turned out, theconsignment had been contracted by aPakistani national who, investigatorsfound, is a former employee of thecompany. A fake end-user certificatehad been used to dupe the Austriancompany into believing that the RDX wasbeing used for some other purpose.

Once the explosive had been ob-tained, it had to be smuggled into India.

Apart from Bombay,^ Surat and Uttar

^ Pradesh weret also on the

K saboteurs'--'• hit list.

...Javed Chikna...

...executed the blasts

It was atthis point thatDawood Ibra-him chose to stepout of the shadows andsupervise the opera-tion himself.

Daud Phanse from Raigaddistrict, a landing agent for contra-band goods, has admitted that TigerMemon personally took him to Dubai tomeet Dawood. Phanse, who is in his 40s,says the meeting took place in January. Theunderworld boss instructed him to arrange forthe landing of explosives at Shekadi village inFebruary. "Humko bhi kuch karke dikhana hai (We toohave to do something)," Dawood is reported to have said. Itwas Phanse's first and only meeting with Dawood, and sincehe is not a major figure in the smuggling world in any way, itremains a mystery why he should have been speciallysummoned to Dubai. Said a police officer: "Phanse isn't eveneducated and it isn't clear why Dawood should want to meethim. But he did identify Dawood as the man he met in Dubaifrom photographs we showed him."

Home Ministry officials handling the investigation saythat Dawood's motives are clearer now."With his money and muscle, he fanciedhimself as the protector of his commu-nity. When it was targeted during theriots, his name was mud. He had tosomehow regain his pride, even it if wasat the expense of losing his investmentsin the country," says a senior official.

Investigators had initially thoughtthat the explosive came to Raigad viaDubai. And they were intrigued that theauthorities there—who are paranoidabout anything bigger than a fire-cracker—should have allowed tonnes ofRDX to be stored. It now turns out thatthe explosives never touched Dubai atall. The consignment was handed overto the saboteurs in a mid-sea opera-tion in February, about 30 km off thePakistani coast.

The conspirators certainly did notleave anything to chance. A secret con-ference was held in the first week ofFebruary. Among those who attendedthe meeting were Tiger Memon and asenior customs officer, who has sincebeen arrested. But, investigators say, thekey figure who had sneaked into Bom-bay for an evening to finalise the detailsof the operation was none other thanDawood Ibrahim himself.

However, one crucial bit—the ac-tual date when the bombs exploded—was not according to the original plan.After prolonged interrogation of sus-pects, the police learned that the blastswere actually meant to coincide withShivaji Jayanti on April 24.

But Memon advanced the date byseveral weeks. One reason for this, sayinvestigators, is that Gul Mohammed

43

S P E C I A L R E P O R T S

Noor Mohammed Shaikh, a young mar-ble-shop owner who underwent train-ing in Pakistan, suffered qualms aboutbeing part of a violent conspiracy andsurrendered himself to the police onMarch 9. But Gul Mohammed did notknow details of the RDX plan—he wasonly told that he could retaliate (hisfamily had suffered in the January riots)in a fresh surge of violence.

PHANSE was one of the landingagents for the RDX, which was off-loaded from a high-speed boat

anchored off the coast for over twonights, since the vehicles brought byTiger Memon were not enough to carryall the explosives the first night. "Weestimate that 7,000 kg of RDX may havebeen brought in on the basis of descrip-tions given by people who did the land-ing. This may not necessarily be true,though. But at least 4,000 kg has beenaccounted for in the police seizures andthe explosions, and we've put tremen-dous pressure to fish out anythingmore which might be there," observ-ed M.N. Singh, joint commissioner(crime), who headed theBombay CID investigation.

Meanwhile, the recruit-ment and training were alsogoing according to plan.About 35 men, whose fam-ilies and businesses were thetargets of communal vio-lence, were taken to Islam-abad via Dubai in February.They skipped immigrationand customs at Islamabadairport, and were taken in ablack-curtained vehicle intothe hills about two hoursfrom the Pakistani capital. They lived in tents and weregiven intensive training in the use of RDX and small armsfor about a week.

The instructors were two bearded men dressed in salwar-kameez who spoke Urdu with a Punjabi accent. Some sightsee-ing was also thrown in for the group—a visit to Murree hillstation and to the famed King Faisal mosque in Islamabad. Thepolice have arrested and interrogated 12 of the 35 men whowent to Pakistan and are now reasonably convinced of theirdetailed accounts of the trip.

Everything worked with clockwork precision. The gre-nades and rifles had arrived and were waiting to be distributedduring the rioting that should inevitably have followed. Thegrenades were marked 'UP'. This stands for Ulbricht Pakistan,which is a private weapons company in Pakistan withAustrian collaboration.

Tiger had decided to let his men provide the first spark forthe riots. Even as the blasts were ripping across the metropolison March 12, seven gangsters armed with rifles and handgrenades were heading south from Mahim, where theMemons lived and from where they planned the entireoperation, to the Bombay Municipal Corporation on a raid-and-kill mission. But providentially, the massive bomb at

ASHESH SHAH

"A core groupof 20, led by TigerMemon, carried out

the operation."A.S. SAMRA

Police Commissioner

Worli went off just after theirmaroon Maruti van passedthe Regional Passport Office,smashing its rear window-pane and exposing the armscache inside. The gangsterspanicked and abandoned thevehicle, which led the policestraight to Memon's flat thesame night.

Memon had already fledthe country along with 11other members of his family.The investigators have estab-

lished that the final execution of the conspiracy was left in thehands of three trusted aides: Anwar Ahmed Haji Theiba, 32;Javed Da wood Patel alias Javed Chikna, 33; and Mohd ShafiKassim Memon, also in his 30s. Theiba, the police believe, isvirtually Tiger Memon's shadow, accompanying him every-where and even doubling as his bodyguard, while Javed andShafi were important operatives in Tiger's smuggling racket.

All three, along with at least six other co-conspirators, aresuspected to have fled the country via Nepal, where Dawoodhas major investments and commands significant influence.Interestingly, the men arrested last week belong to an entirelydifferent gang, indicating that the conspiracy was not merelylimited to the Memons in Bombay's underworld.

"The planning and execution of the conspiracy has beenfully uncovered. As for the master-minds abroad, we will getdetails from them only when we get the chance to interrogatethem," says DGP S. Ramamurthi. For the moment, there seemslittle chance of that.

In any case, the investigators are now saddled with a jobthat goes way beyond merely unravelling the plot andcatching the culprits. Two other responsibilities have beenladled onto their plate. One is to somehow convince the USthat enough evidence exists to declare Pakistan a terrorist

44 I N D I A TODAY » J U N E SI) . 199j

state. The second is to launch a drive against the underworldon the basis of the huge amount of peripheral information thatsuch a thorough probe has generated.

US officials have been given a sneak preview of theinterrogation reports of the men who went to Pakistan fortraining. They have been told of the involvement of a Pakistaninational in obtaining the explosives. They have also beenshown a list of seizures and told that these arms could not havecome in without Pakistan's help, just as the saboteurs couldnot have sneaked past the immigration counter at Karachiairport without official connivance.

The Americans admit that the evidence is significant andthey, in turn, have passed on information about variousIslamic fundamentalist groups in West Asia who sponsorterrorism. But the US authorities are still not convincedthat the Pakistani government is directly involved and notjust its citizens in their individual capacity. The investi-gators still have not been able to establish a connectionbetween the Pakistani national who made arrangements forthe RDX, and the isi. The testimony of those who weretrained in Pakistan has been dismissed because the USbelieves that interrogation reports can be cooked up. Andthe absence of entry stamps on their passports at Karachihas been pooh-poohed because the US claims that Pakistaniairports are notoriously lax in such matters.

The Government is now looking for irrefutable evidence—such as the source of funding for theoperation—to nail Pakistan. The inter-state and international dimensions ofthe conspiracy have been cited as areason for handing over the probe to theCBI. The Bombay Police, however, dis-miss this as "a political matter" notrt ally relevant to the progress of theongoing investigation. The police probehas been conducted with the full cooper-ation of the CBI, the IB, RAW, and otherstate police forces.

A ND it in no way prevents the CBIt-\m pursuing suspects and leads

JL JL elsewhere in the country orabroad. Adds M.N. Singh: "The BombayPolice have visited 80 places in 15 states,and quite a few of the 103 arrests werefrom outside the city. In fact, the blastinvestigation has helped us launch adrive against the underworld."

And this aspect of the probe hasresulted in several "encounter"' deaths inBombay. In just two months, 14 peoplehave been shot dead, against 16 suchdeaths during the whole of last year. Theencounter deaths are mostly fromDawood Ibrahim's gang, as police main-tain that gangsters from the other two major underworldgroups led by Arun Gawli and Amar Naik now tend tosurrender rather than open fire. The men arrested in the bombblast conspiracy have also surrendered without a fight.

But the city-wide police crackdown has resulted in anunintended fallout which has the potential for serious, long-term damage. There are allegations that the police detain-ed scores of people, including women and children, for vary-ing periods without formally arresting them as required un-der the law, and assaulted several of them in a bid to extractinformation about their relatives or friends who are on

The USis stillV not convinced\t Pakistan's

k role was onan official

level.

the wantedlist. Even afterbeing let off, theywere asked to re-port regularly to policestations, something whichonly a court can order. Somevictims have filed petitions inthe high court against their illegaldetention and continued harass-ment by the police.

What's worse, there are charges thatpolicemen not necessarily connected with theprobe are now involved in a widespread extortionracket, with money being extracted from Muslimson threat of arrest and implication in the bombconspiracy. Says a noted advocate, P.A. Sebastian, who isthe secretary of the Committee for the Protection of Demo-cratic Rights: "Last week alone, six Malayali Muslims fromNagpada told me that they had to pay up to Rs 15,000 each toavoid being locked up and beaten. The amount can be as highas Rs 1 lakh if richer people are targeted.'' Added a prominentsocial worker, Sushoba Barwe: "If the charges are true, it'svery worrying, since it'll only alienate the Muslims further."

After a lull created by the demand for a CBI takeover of theblasts probe, the police investigation is back on steam. "It

One of the accused in the case being taken into police custody

looks like we'll continue to be in charge of the case," saysSamra. But with the top-level conspirators safely ensconcedabroad, the police can only hope to pick up secondaryhoodlums and extract more information on the entire crimi-nal enterprise. And they seem in no hurry yet to filechargesheets against the accused in court. Meanwhile, withcommunal tension in the city rising after the sensationalmurders of two legislators. Chief Minister Sharad Pawar andSamra have to worry once again about maintaining peaceand thwarting the foreign-inspired conspiracy to spreadmurder and mayhem in India's financial capital. •