It was a Saturday evening and my parents were visiting some relatives somewhere in Shahibaug area of Ahmedabad. Around 7 PM I got a call from my colleague, a place where I was interning as a part of my Chartered Accountancy course, asking me if I am alright and safe at home. I wondered what happened. I was informed there were serial bomb blasts in the city and many of them took place on the route our team was taking for a client’s office where we were doing the audit of the annual accounts.
I switched on the tv and the visuals were of the crossroads we were passing by every day for the past 2 months. The visuals then moved to Civil Hospital where one more blast took place. The terrorists had targeted two hospitals near the blast site so that when the injured are brought in for first aid, more people can be killed. Civil Hospital is where my parents were visiting our relative. I made panic calls but the network was jammed immediately and no calls would get through. I did not know what to do.
A few hours later, my parents reached home and I cried out of relief.
The three of us watched tv in stunned silence that evening. In a city that has a history of communal violence and that had witnessed the 2002 Godhra carnage and subsequent riots just a few years prior, we expected the worst. The police and state administration, however, swung into action and made sure peace prevails.
I got a call from my boss informing me that I am being taken off the audit team. I was the only girl in the team in the godforsaken industrial area and he didn’t want my safety concern as additional work. He said he would join us for two days where I would hand over my work. On Monday, we stayed back till 2 AM so that I did not have to go there the next day. The client had arranged for our conveyance from our office on Ashram Road to Vatva.
At 2:30 AM when we left for Ashram Road, it had started drizzling. There were 8 of us in the cab including the driver. We were stopped by police six times on our way back. Police eyeing a bunch of people with backpacks and laptops suspiciously along with a lone woman in the group. At one place, a woman police officer was called in to check my bag and ask me for details on where we are coming from and where we were going. I had to switch on the laptop to show her how it is not going to blow up I guess.
It was terrifying.
Years later, I spoke to one of the survivors. The young man I talked to was 8 years old when he lost his father and elder brother.
On 26 July 2008, 8-year-old Yash Vyas with his 10-11-year-old brother Rohan and father, Dushyant Vyas, stepped out of the home to learn how to cycle. They rode the cycle for about 2-3 hours. At around 7:30-7:45 PM, someone called up his father and asked him to wait at the Civil Hospital. Yash doesn’t know the exact details, but his father who worked at Ahmedabad Civil Hospital’s cancer department’s laboratory waited.
10 minutes later, an ambulance rolled in. His father asked his two sons to wait for him with the cycle and went to check in the ambulance. And there was another blast. The blast was so powerful it was heard over a radius of 2 km from the spot. Rohan was burnt beyond recognition. Yash was injured. He then saw his father being taken on the stretcher at 8:30 PM. That was the last time he saw him. He fell unconscious. His father, severely injured, bled to death.
56 people had died in the bomb blasts.
The day I spoke to Yash, Safdar Nagori, one of the convicts in the blast, had said how he would choose Quran over Constitution. Terrorism may not have any religion, but this terrorist did kill in the name of his religion. A resident of Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, 54-years-old Nagori was associated with the banned Islamic terrorist organization Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI). After SIMI was banned, reports suggest, many of the members joined the ranks of PFI (Popular Front of India). PFI members are now getting caught running terror modules and planning Ghazwa-e-Hind and turning India into an Islamic caliphate. Just another religion-less terror group.
The Threat Email
On 26th July 2008 at 6:41 in the evening, several news agencies received a 14-page e-mail five minutes before the explosions with the subject line: “Await 5 minutes for the revenge of Gujarat”. It was clear enough that the terrorists were referring to the Gujarat riots of 2002 which took place after the Godhra carnage. This email was sent by Indian Mujahidin. The email further said, “In the name of Allah the Indian Mujahideen strike again! Do whatever you can, within 5 minutes from now, feel the terror of Death!” By mentioning Allah, it was also clear that Islam is the inspiration of these terror attacks.
The terrorists mocked the Indian security systems reminding the then CM of Maharashtra Vilasrao Deshmukh and his deputy R. R. Patil of the bomb blasts that took place in the local trains of Mumbai on 11th July 2006. The email said “We wonder at your memory. Have you forgotten the evening of 11 July 2006 so quickly and so easily?”
The Blasts
Five minutes later, as threatened in the email, the city of Ahmedabad shook with the serial blasts. It started at 6:45 PM and the explosives blasted in various parts of the city at regular intervals. There were 21 blasts in all which took place at 14 different locations in the city in the next 70 to 80 minutes. The bomb blasts shook the following areas: Khadia, Raipur, Sarangpur, Maninagar, Hatkeshwar Circle, Bapunagar, Thakkarbapa Nagar, Jawahar Chowk, Govindwadi, Isanpur, Narol, and Sarkhej.
Two more severe blasts occurred in two hospitals in the city namely L. G. Hospital Maninagar and Ahmedabad Civil Hospital’s Trauma Center. The bomb blast in the civil hospital caused what could be the peak of the most horrific scenes in the city ever. The blast in the hospital claimed 37 lives, the most of all 21 blasts in the city. The hospital was targeted specifically with the intention of raising the count of casualties which would, in turn, amplify the fear in the minds of people.
The Investigations
27th July 2008, late in the night. Abhay Chudasama, DCP of the crime branch of Ahmedabad police was busy gauging the depths breadths of this case when he started receiving inputs from the network of his informers about the said activities SIMI agents were involved in for the last few days. A report by News18 has detailed his role in the investigation of this case.
According to the report, Abhay Chudasama had an invincible and impeccable network of informers which is a prerequisite to breaking the backbones of organized crimes like such terrorist attacks. All he needed was a team of a few more committed officers. The state government extended full support on this front and he was provided with a team of brave and intelligent officers with an excellent track record of solving complicated cases.
The state home ministry overnight deputed a team of officers like GL Singhal, Himanshu Shukla, Rajendra Asari, and Mayur Chavda into the crime branch. Earlier these officers were at that time serving in different cities of the state. It must be noted here that, the network of informers, in this case, grew exponentially with every single officer included in the team. DGP Ashish Bhatia was the joint CP now.
The Initial Leads
As per the inputs received from the informers, Abhay Chudasama led the investigations in those directions. A handful of suspects were rounded up. No concrete development was marked in the initial two weeks despite tireless efforts by the team. Only the IP address from which the email was sent to various news agencies was found. It was U.S national Ken Haywood from whose IP address the threatening email was sent. He used to live in the Sanpada area of New Mumbai. His residence was raided by the ATS officials on 27th July 2008 soon after tracing the IP address. But the real culprits were yet to be traced.
After two and half weeks of futile efforts, one day Abhay Chudasama received a call from the informer. He heard a ‘Pakki Khabar’ from the other end. The informer in Bharuch had seen the red and white car used in the Ahmedabad bomb blasts. Within minutes, DCP Chudasama left for Bharuch. He was accompanied by IPS officer GL Singhal and DSP Mayur Chavda.
Officers reached the spot as told by the informers. The house they raided gave them the first lead. The terrorists had made a few of the bombs in the same house. The interrogations of the house owner revealed a phone number. And this phone number was the master key that went on to open the locks of not only the Ahmedabad blasts but also the locks of the bomb blast cases in other cities like Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Jaipur where blasts had taken place.
Connecting The Dots
The technical surveillance team received some more clues. According to these clues, suspects were being picked up one after the other. The teams were ensuring almost zero time lag between receiving the information and catching the suspects. Jahid Sheikh was the first to be arrested on this lead. The links to this case unfolded and it was revealed that it was a grand pan-India conspiracy.
The Arrests
The day Mufti Abu Bashir and his allies were brought to Gujarat, these different teams had caught 10 more accused from different locations. The total number of arrests on that single day was 13. Everyone was being interrogated separately. More information came out. The technical surveillance team was already prepared with its equipment. The officers located and arrested 30 more accused within the next two days.
This network was called Indian Mujahidin as they had identified themselves in the threat email. It was the same old SIMI that is the Students Islamic Movement of India in its new form.
Ahmedabad crime branch arrested 78 accused suspects. 13 from Ahmedabad, 5 from Vadodara, 1 from Bharuch, 1 from Bhuj, 2 from Surat, 11 from Maharashtra, 12 from Madhya Pradesh, 10 from Karnataka, 9 from Uttar Pradesh, 5 from Kerala, 3 from Andhra Pradesh, 3 from Rajasthan, 2 from Jharkhand, and 1 from Bihar. When 30 accused were arrested at once, the role of SIMI was exposed.
‘Quran’s verdict is above all’
Dinesh Nargave, Superintendent, Bhopal Central Jail, said soon after Nagori was sentenced to death, he said, “The Indian Constitution does not matter to me. The only thing that matters is the judgement of the Quran. It is at the top.” Nagori was General Secretary of SIMI. He was accused of arranging the explosives used in the serial blasts. He also raised funds for the other illegal activities of SIMI. His father was an assistant sub-inspector in the crime branch of Madhya Pradesh Police.
Expert in brainwashing
According to officials, Nagori is an expert in brainwashing people. So much so he was able to convince a guard at Bhopal Central Jail to convert to Islam. The guard was removed from duty after the superintendent came to know about the incident. According to the superintendent, whoever was placed on duty at his cell, he tried to lure them into converting to Islam. He used to tell them, “Everyone is equal in Islam. Hindu religion does not support equality. Convert to Islam, and you will be treated as equal.”
Ahmedabad Serial Bomb Blast case
On February 18, 2022, a special court in Ahmedabad announced a death sentence for 38 out of 49 convicts in the 2008 serial blast case. The remaining 11 have been sentenced to life imprisonment until death. Earlier on February 8 2022, the court had convicted 49 out of 77 accused in the case. The serial bomb blasts that took place in Ahmedabad on July 26 2008, had caused 56 deaths, and 243 innocent citizens were injured in the blasts.
