India court hands down fifth guilty verdict in 1993 Mumbai bombing trial News
India court hands down fifth guilty verdict in 1993 Mumbai bombing trial

[JURIST] An Indian court in Mumbai convicted a fifth man Thursday in connection with the 1993 Mumbai bombings [BBC backgrounder], a series of attacks which killed 257 people and injured over 700 others in India's financial center. The court found that Mohammed Ghanser planted explosives near the Zaveri Bazaar market which caused a blast that killed 17 people, opening Ghanser up to the possibility of capital punishment. Ghanser is the eighth defendant for which the court has reached a verdict out of 123 defendants charged in connection with the bombings, in a trial that has lasted over a decade. The court on Tuesday convicted four men [JURIST report], all members of the Memon family, of conspiracy and aiding a terrorist act, while also finding three other members of the Memon family not guilty.

The court will likely take several weeks to announce the verdicts of all the defendants, and will wait to sentence those found guilty until after all of the verdicts have been announced. Eleven defendants have died since proceedings began, and 36 suspects, including suspected mastermind Dawood Ibrahim [BBC profile], remain at large. BBC News has more.