It has taken 13 years for the special TADA court to give its verdict on the 1993 Mumbai blasts that killed 257 persons and injured over 700. The entire judgment for the 123 accused, which will be given in phases, is likely to take several weeks to wrap up.

On Day 1, four members of the Memon family have been found guilty. However, Tiger Memon, believed to be one of the masterminds of the blasts, is absconding. So is Dawood Ibrahim. The conviction will provide some solace to those whose relatives died in the blasts.

It would also come as a shot in the arm for investigating agencies whose track record on conviction has been very poor. But the judgment, which will play out over the next several weeks or months, is unlikely to provide a closure on the events that happened on March 12, 1993.

There are several reasons for this. One, there are likely to be a number of appeals against the TADA court’s ruling, which could delay the final verdict indefinitely. Two, the prime accused Tiger Memon, Dawood Ibrahim, Anees Ibrahim and Mohammed Dossa are still at large and outside India. Finally, the court ruling has already been overtaken by subsequent events, most notably the train blasts in Mumbai earlier this year. The 13-year lag between the event and judgment is a grim reminder of the failure of our investigating agencies and judicial system. But more than that, the fact that the masterminds of the 1993 blasts are still roaming free is symptomatic of the limitations of the process of punishing the guilty.

Modern-day terrorism, with its intricate international web, is such that it is difficult for national agencies and courts to book the culprits. The failure to get the main accused behind the blasts shows that without international cooperation global terrorism cannot be combated.

It is well known that some of the accused such as Dawood have been seen in public in Pakistan and Dubai in the last few years. But efforts to extradite them have not succeeded. Only after 9/11 have there been greater efforts at international cooperation to tackle global terror.

Once the US was hit by terror attacks on home soil, it came to the aid of countries that had been victims of terrorism for far longer. Subsequent bombings in London and Madrid have provided further impetus to international collaboration on tackling terrorism.

However, far more needs to be done if the architects of terror acts such as the 1993 blasts are to be brought to book.

<B>From India

© Editorial-The Times of India</B>