Mustafa Dossa convict in 1993 Mumbai blast died after complaining of chest pain

Mumbai: Mustafa Dossa, one of the six convicts in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case, died hours after he was admitted to the JJ Hospital in Mumbai after complaining of chest pain, CNN News 18 reported.

He was admitted to jail ward hosptial around 3am after he complained of chest pain and hypertension.

“Dossa was admitted to the jail ward of the hospital at 3 am,” hospital dean TP Lahane told PTI.

Earlier Mustafa sought help from special Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) court for his heart condition and expressed he wants to go for bypass surgery.

CBI in its argument said Mustafa deserves “more severe” punishment as he was the mastermind behind the serial blast which killed around 257 people on 12 March 1993 and sought death punishment severe than the given to the other convict Yakhub Menon.

Special CBI counsel Deepak Salvi stated that “If not for him (and other absconding accused), the crime would never have taken place,” saying Mustafa was one of the “brains” behind the conspiracy and that his degree of responsibility towards the commission of the crime was the highest.

He further said that “Dossa was from among the prime conspirators giving instructions to others”, that the conspiracy for the serial blast was first held at his residence in Dubai and he is one the masterminds financed the landing of arms and explosives and also sent people to Pakistan for training etc.

Salvi earlier argued saying “Just like the supreme court had held that Yakub Memon’s deeds cannot be viewed distinct from the act of Tiger Memon (a wanted accused in the blasts case), the same can be attributed to Dossa and other suggestion would be futile and worth discarding at the first glance” and added “archers wearing the quiver and releasing arrows and one of the principal perpetrators who got the work done through others.”

“The offence could have been averted had it not been hatched by the absconders (including Dossa) or if he had not initiated it by sending the first consignment of arms” and that “The crime of terrorism is in itself the aggravating circumstances as it carries a special stigmatisation due to the deliberate form of inhuman treatment it represents and the severity of the pain and suffering inflicted,” Salvi had argued. He further said that he was a known smuggler and has criminal antecedents.

“The crime committed by him is of the utmost gravity, heinous, dastardly, diabolical and demonic with no regard towards the country and her citizens, and was carried out pruriently relishing the act of spilling the blood and slaughtering,” he argued.

In the second installment of the trial, the court had on 16 June convicted five accused, including Dossa and extradited gangster Abu Salem, under the charges of murder, conspiracy and sections of now repealed TADA, while the sixth accused Riyaz Siddiqui was convicted only under TADA Act.

The trial of the seven accused — Abu Salem, Mustafa Dossa, Karimullah Khan, Firoz Abdul Rashid Khan, Riyaz Siddiqui, Tahir Merchant and Abdul Quayyum — was separated from the main case as they were arrested at the time of conclusion of the main trial. The court had acquitted Abdul Quayyum of all the charges.

With inputs from PTI