2002-03 Mumbai serial blasts: Saquib Nachan’s case rests, in bagful of papers

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Now the trial of the 2002-03 Mumbai serial blasts, which claimed 15 lives, is in the last stages. Nachan is deemed as the main conspirator in the explosions between December 2002 and March 2003.

“When you realise your life is at stake, you go to any extreme to save it. I fought my own cases because no one else would,” says Nachan, currently lodged in Thane jail.

In the court room, he has developed a reputation for sharp questioning, interlaced with good-humoured verbal jousting with Special Public Prosecutor Rohini Salian. Even officers at the receiving end often pat him on the back while getting off the witness box.

In police and court records, though, the rap-sheet against Nachan, whose family is believed to own large holdings of land around the Mumbai-Nashik Highway, runs long. He is accused of being a hardened radical who fought with the Afghan mujahideen against the Russians in the ’80s, of sending Muslims to Pakistan for arms training, and of having links with ISI-backed Afghan militants.

The first terror case was lodged against him in 1991, even before the Babri Masjid demolition that led to a spurt in such cases. Following a conviction, he was in jail from 1992 till 2001. Since then, he has been charged in one terror case of organising four bomb blasts in Mumbai in 2002-03, and murdering three people.

In 2004, Nachan was forced to represent himself in the court, after the local bar association in the Bhiwandi-Thane region refused to take up his brief as he was accused of shooting down two lawyers.

Every day, Nachan wakes up at 3 am to prepare his legal brief. He has also filed “over 300 RTI applications”, and says the replies have helped him “formulate defence strategy”, which he has shared with co-accused in the blasts. “(Co-accused) Adnan Mulla, for example, was picked up just before his marriage. My paperwork ensured that court took cognisance of his illegal detention and gave him bail,” Nachan says.

Nachan has questioned over three dozen witnesses and officers, including senior IPS officers, as part of his legal cases. “He is meticulous and knows every small detail. If you want to know about what transpired when and who said what, you speak to him,” says 65-year old Abdul Rahim Ansari, whose son Muzammil is a co-accused in the case.

Born into a landed family in Borivali, Nachan is the third of 11 children of local community leader Abdul Hamid Nachan. A commerce graduate, he first gravitated towards the Jamaat-e-Islami, and later to its student wing, SIMI, in the early ’80s.

He rose quickly up the SIMI hierarchy, to the post of general secretary. In the early ’90s, he came on the radar of investigators after he allegedly travelled to Pakistan and from there to the Afghanistan border.

Nachan says he was framed. “I travelled legally, on my own passport. I have ancestral property in Pakistan which had to be taken care of,” he says.

In 1997, Nachan was sentenced to life by a TADA court in Gujarat. After the Supreme Court reduced the sentence to 10 years, Nachan was released in April 2001.

But months after he got out, in September 2001, SIMI was banned, and Nachan was back under watch.

In March 2003, he was arrested for the Mumbai serial blasts.

“Nachan collected men, firearms, ammunition and material for preparing bombs and arranged for training of Muslim youths with the intention of waging war or being prepared to wage war against the government of India,” says the Mumbai Police chargesheet.

In 2004, he was discharged in the December 2002 Ghatkopar blast case, but the trial in the remaining three cases is still on, which Nachan is now fighting himself.

Later, he was accused of three murders, including that of two Hindu lawyers and a Muslim alleged to be working against the interest of the community. Nachan says he honed his legal skills fighting these murder cases, earning an acquittal in all.

Released on bail in January 2011 in the blast cases, in August 2012, Nachan was accused of planning a conspiracy to murder VHP activist Manoj Raicha. He and his son Shamil, an engineer, were picked up. Shamil was granted bail but Nachan found himself in jail once again.

Adding that he doesn’t support “random killings” such as through blasts, Nachan says the only reason he keeps getting picked up is his SIMI past. “In India, it is easier to be let off in genuine cases. It is the made-up and fake cases that keep you in jail for long.”

CASES AGAINST NACHAN

* Sentenced for life in 1997 by a TADA court. The SC reduces term to 10 years, which Nachan serves
* Booked over ‘inflammatory’ pamphlets in 2001. Case on
* Named in the Jan 2002 murder of an advocate. Acquitted in 2008
* Named in an April 2002 murder in Bhiwandi. Acquitted in 2008
* Named in a July 2002 murder, again in Bhiwandi, 18 months after his arrest in the bomb blast cases. Acquitted in 2015
* Named for a murder bid against VHP activist Manoj Raicha in August 2012. In jail in the case
* Being tried as conspirator for three Mumbai 2002-03 blasts