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Justice for 188 deaths on Mumbai's lifeline

7/11 Mumbai train blast: 12 accused convicted

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7/11 ब्लास्ट: 5 दोषियों को फांसी की सजा, 7 को उम्रकैद

MUMBAI: A special court on Wednesday sentenced to death five of the 12 people convicted for the 2006 Mumbai serial train blasts that killed 188 people and injured 829 commuters. Seven convicts were sentenced to life in jail. The sentences come two weeks after the 12 were found guilty.The prosecution had sought the death penalty for eight of the convicts and life imprisonment for four of them, for the seven, serial train blasts on July 11, 2006, on Mumbai's packed suburban trains.A Special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court judge, Yatin Shinde sentenced to death Ehtesham Sidduiqui, Asif Khan, Faisal Shaikh, Naveed Khan and Kamal Ansari, for planting the bombs on the trains.Tanveer Ansari and Mohammed Ali, who provided the premises in Govandi for assembling the bombs, and Sajid Ansari, who made the timers and the electric circuits used to set off the bombs were given life sentences. Special Public Prosecutor Raja Thakare they should be sentenced to life until the end of their lives and in no case for less than 60 years.Soon after the conviction verdict on September 11 -- at which time one of the accused was acquitted -- the defence, in an unusual move, sought to examine witnesses who deposed on the mitigating circumstances in favour of the convicts. It then examined nine such witnesses. Among them were family members of the convicts, Nadeem Akhtar, a fellow inmate and another accused in the 13/7 Mumbai serial blasts, a university teacher lodged in Arthur Road Jail and Arun Ferreira, a writer and social activist, who was acquitted on charges of being involved in Naxal activities.On September 21, the advocate for the defence, Yug Chaudhary, referred to injuries and brutalities inflicted on the then-accused, during police custody> He also said they underwent forced narco-analysis tests performed by a bogus doctor against whom a police report was registered. He also said that the accused were kept in solitary confinement despite it being illegal even for those against whom death sentence is confirmed.In his final arguments on September 23, Thakare said that none of the accused presented any mitigating circumstances that qualified them to seek leniency; not their ages, not their educational qualifications or their family situation and the conditions during their pre-trial incarceration. Chaudhary referred to alleged mastermind LeT operative Azam Cheema as the architect of the crime and the accused as mere labourers. Pointing to convict Zameer Shaikh, the defence said that in his confession he had said that while first being indoctrinated, he had said that killing innocent people was wrong. "However, continuous indoctrination made him change his mind," he said."They are the merchants of death," Thakare said, while seeking the death penalty for eight of them. "Thinkers pose a question and even public cry is that why honest taxpayers should be burdened into paying for the convicts' maintenance and upkeep while they are imprisoned for the next 40-50 years of their lives."