Eighty-five-year-old convict in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case, whose seven years’ sentence was enhanced to life imprisonment by the Supreme Court recently, died on Sunday in Sandheri village of Raigad district in coastal Konkan region, after protracted illness.
Confirming the passing away of Issaq Mohammed Hajwane in his native village of Sandheri in Raigad district, his lawyer Farhana Shah told The Pioneer: “He had been suffering from dementia and other ailments for quite some time. He was bed-ridden when he breathed his last”.
Hajwane was to have surrendered by May 17 as per the Supreme Court directive. “Though he was not keeping well, my client was mentally prepared to surrender as per the deadline set by the apex court,” Shah said.
In the normal course, Hajwane was to have surrendered by April 18, as per the March 21, 2013 order of the Supreme Court which confirmed, reduced or enhanced the sentences handed out to various convicts by the trial court in the 1993 serial blasts case.
However, actor Sanjay Dutt and five other convicts in the 1993 serial blasts case were subsequently granted four weeks’ additional time to surrender.
The TADA court had sentenced Hajwane to seven years’ rigorous imprisonment for possessing 13 hand grenades and empties (a part of the consignment of explosives and ammunition brought for use in the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai) which he disposed off in the creek to absolve himself of the offences. The trial court had, however, acquitted Hajwane of the charge of being involved in the larger conspiracy behind the 1993 blasts.
However, while allowing the Maharashtra Government’s appeal against the trial court’s order acquitting Hajwane from the larger conspiracy charge, enhanced the sentence given to him by the trial court.
In its ruling given on March 21, a SC bench of Justices P Sathasivam and BS Chauhan observed: “…. We are of the view that the Special Judge was not justified in acquitting him (Hajwane) from the first charge of larger conspiracy merely on the ground that he did not know about the places where the bombs had to be thrown and he was not the resident of Bombay and did not participate in conspiratorial meetings”.
“The finding of fact recorded by the Special Judge is also contradictory as the court held that he participated in the arms training at Sandheri. However, he observed that the evidence does not disclose that any of those accused had been trained in handling of hand grenades,” the judges noted.
“In view of the fact that there is sufficient material on record that the respondent (Hajwane) participated in the training of handling hand grenades, there was no occasion for the learned special judge to take such a view,” the Judge stated.
“In view of the above, the appeal stands allowed. The respondent is awarded life imprisonment,” the SC bench ruled. Hajwane is the third convict in the 1993 blasts case to have died, before serving the sentence awarded to them by trial court.
Earlier, Mohammed Iqbal Mohammed Yusuf Shaikh, who had been awarded capital punishment by a TADA court for his “repeated acts of terror” in the 1993 Mumbai serial bomb blasts case, died of tuberculosis at Pune’s State-run Sassoon Hospital on November 6,2007.
Similarly, underworld gangster and Dawood Ibrahim’s one-time accomplice Ejaz Pathan, who had been suffering from multiple aliments, had died at the JJ Hospital in Mumbai on June 15, 2007, a week after he was sentenced to 10 years’ jail term by the TADA court in the serial blasts case.