Hyderabad: Eleven months after they were sentenced to death for the Gokul Chat and Lumbini park blasts which claimed 44 lives, Md Ismail Chowdhari and Aneeq Shafique Sayeed are being tried in terrorist cases in other parts of the country.
The judgment won’t be executed until the trials in all the cases in which they are implicated are completed and their appeals against the sentencing exhausted. The two men are lodged in a Mumbai jail. The city marks the 12th anniversary of the twin blasts on Sunday.
The blasts took place on August 25, 2007, within five minutes of each other, first at Lumbini Park on the Hussainsagar shores and then at Gokul Chat at Koti. The case was investigated by the National Investiga-tion Agency, which ended its probe in 2018. The Nampally sessions court convicted and sentenced to death the two Indian Mujahideen operators, Md Ismail Chowdhari and Aneeq Shafique Sayeed.
A third convict, Anjum Ashan, was sentenced to life in prison. Two others, Farooq Sharfuddin Tarkash and Mohammed Sadiq, were acquitted for want of evidence.
Among those who are waiting for the duo to be punished is Syed Raheem and his younger daughter. Mr Raheem, a resident of Saidabad, had stopped at Gokul Chat at about 6.50 pm to buy his daughter some ice-cream.
The bomb exploded just then, and Mr Raheem was thrown aside by the impact of the blast. He was rushed to Osmania General Hospital, and lost an eye. Eleven years later, Mr Raheem says, “The wait is tiring. When will we get justice? It is now 12 years. Will we ever get to see them punished?”
Another survivor, Ramavat Chander, said, “I lost my right eye. I have been suffering every day. The incident affected my education as well as my career. I am not fit to get a job in the police or military. We waited for 11 years for the judgment, how many more years do we wait to see them punished?”
The victims have come under one umbrella and will be holding a condolence meeting at Gokul Chat and Lumbini Park on Sunday to mark the tragedy that changed their lives.
