2 get death, Abu Salem life for ’93 Mumbai blasts

24 YEARS LATER Special TADA court sentences five in India’s longest terror trial

A court on Thursday sentenced two men to death and two more, including gangster Abu Salem, to life in jail for the 1993 Mumbai serial bombings that killed 257 people.

A fifth convict, Riyaz Siddiqui, was given 10 years in prison.

The verdict came 24 years after the dozen blasts in India’s financial capital and nearly 80 days after they were found guilty by the Special Tada Court.

The 50-year-old Salem was spared the gallows because of an extradition treaty with Portugal, where he was hiding before being brought to India.

Salem and his former actressgirlfriend Monica Bedi were arrested by Interpol in Lisbon in 2002 and were handed to Indian agencies in November 2005.

An important clause in the Indo-Portuguese treaty for Salem’s extradition was an assurance by New Delhi that he would not be sentenced to death. “The extradition treaty says the maximum sentence permissible to him is 25 years, since life imprisonment and death penalty are banned in Portugal,” special public prosecutor Deepak Salve said.

“The government will take a decision … whether to commute the life sentence to 25 years.”

Co-convicts Firoz Khan and Tahir Merchant were free from such constraints.

CONTINUED ON P 6 Salem in the Supreme Court, said that he was extradited from Portugal on an Indian government undertaking that he would not be given death penalty or sentenced to a jail term exceeding 25 years.

However, in 2012, the Supreme Court had ruled that the Portugal government cannot impose preconditions on Indian courts.

FULL REPORT ON P11