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Ten years after the (in)famous 1993 Mumbai Blasts, the financial capital of India experienced another spate of terrorist attacks on similar targets at around the same time on 25 August 2003.  By unhappy coincidence, I was there in Mumbai interviewing people, administrators and politicians on issues related to organized crime, communalism and corruption. As these problems are here to stay for a long time, some reflections based on first hand experience may help to understand and analyze crisis situations like this one.

Around 12.50 p.m. Zaveri Bazar, is one of the most crowded markets of Mumbai city. The famous temple of Mumbadevi, from which Mumbai city has got its name, is located here. On 25 August, a cab exploded and shattered the areas surrounding of the temple. A few minutes later, another CNG cab, owned by Shiv Narayan Panday, exploded at the Gateway of India. The blasts claimed 52 lives and left more than 150 maimed. In a span of fifteen minutes the whole of Mumbai city came under the cloud of deadly terror. The terrorists had cleverly chosen the locations and timing of the explosion explosion.  Both places are crowded; Zaveri Bazar is known for its gold and silver market while Gateway of India is a famous tourist place. 

There are some special features about these blasts. This was the first time terrorists used CNG cabs as a force multiplier to increase the lethality of the attacks. In both blasts, women were used to accomplish the task. Reportedly a group of women terrorists, Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Faith), which was limited to Kashmir, has become active to support terrorism in mainland India. This can pose a new challenge for investigation agencies. The Deputy Prime Minister Mr. L K Advani and Mumbai Police have identified the ‘Students Islamic Movement of India’ (SIMI) and the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT).  Three different reasons have been advanced to explain the attacks:  revenge for Gujarat, a ploy to derail the Indo?Pak talks and protest against the proposed visit of the Israeli Prime Minister Arial Sharon to India. Incidentally, Zaveri Bazar is a market dominated by Gujarati jewelers.  Therefore revenge for the Gujarat riots is considered to be the most likely reason. In any case, these claims have serious implications for the future.  

The role of the media has come under severe scrutiny after these blasts. All television channels, including the National Channel, were reporting the occurrence of five blasts till as late as 4.30 PM, involving RDX explosives. These news channels even referred to highly sensitive places like Mumbadevi Temple, Marine Lines and Bandra Stations as being targeted. Finally, around five o’clock in the evening it was clarified that only two blasts had occurred. Later after a week, investigating agencies accepted that the explosives were not RDX, but large gelatin sticks.  Deliberate rumor mongering is a crime in sensitive situations, but what is to be done about such irresponsible, official and collective misinformation?  Surprisingly, the police took the decision to block cellular phone networks to control such rumor mongering.  The misinformation by the media and blockage of cell-phone lines turned out to be disastrous, because it revived memories of the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai and lack of news about near and dear ones created an atmosphere of terror. This served the purpose of terrorism, with the media and police supporting their mission.

In the last nine months Mumbai has experienced seven bomb blasts, killing more than seventy people, injuring more than 300, and destroying property worth more than a crore. Most of them had occurred in buses or railway stations, which are the most crowded places in Mumbai. In all these blasts ammonium nitrate and gelatin were used as explosives. In the city underworld, the police department is finding it difficult to differentiate between criminals and terrorists. Investigation agencies have had very little success in finding the culprits or preventing these incidents. It is not surprising that common people were terrorized by these blasts. But Mumbai is known to bounce back sooner than expected. It seems that ‘Mumbaikars’ (common people of Mumbai) have accepted such incidents as part of their daily lives. Though markets and people’s flow from outside the city were affected for the first few days after the blasts, Mumbai was back to its routine the very next day. Fortunately, these blasts did not acquire a communal dimension especially since the Ganesh festival was underway. One can only hope that no such incident occurs again, otherwise it could definitely lead to the kind of communal riots that followed the 1993 blasts.