Court irked as 2 Mumbai blasts accused stay outside courtroom during hearing

A special TADA court in Mumbai on Monday ordered that two of the accused in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case shall not be produced before it till further orders.

Mustafa Dossa and Abdul Qayyum, the two accused, were not present in the court for over 70 minutes after the proceedings began, though they had been brought to the court complex from the jail, said special prosecutor Deepak Salvi.

Irked, the judge directed the police who escorted them to file a written explanation as to why the accused were not present in the court during the hearing, and said the two shall not be brought to the court till further orders.

Special TADA judge G A Sanap was hearing the final arguments in the case.

Seven accused—extradited gangsters Abu Salem, Dossa, Karimullah Khan, Firoz Abdul Rashid Khan, Riyaz Siddiqui, Tahir Merchant and Abdul Qayyum—are facing trial in the case in which the court had earlier convicted 100 men, including Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt.

The trial of these seven men was separated as they were arrested later.

As many as 257 people were killed in the thirteen powerful blasts in Mumbai on March 12, 1993, carried out through a conspiracy hatched by fugitive gangsters Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon.