Book Review #78: Black Friday: The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts By S. Hussain Zaidi

Title: Black Friday: The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts

Author: S. Hussain Zaidi

Publishing Year: 2002

Publishers: Penguin Group

Genre: Non-Fiction

Pages: 252 (Digital Edition)

Source: Personal Copy

A gory event that ruptured the heart of India. An event that is truly unforgettable, unpardonable. It was the day, the terrorists rejoiced at seeing their revenge has given the fruit. The revenge that was plotted meticulously and executed at near perfection, which resulted in the death of several hundred people and the injury of several thousands, and, making the damages cost worth hundreds of crore rupees. It was the Bombay 1993 serial blasts on March 12^th, The Friday. As the author puts it, The Black Friday.

As a crime journalist, Author S. Hussain Zaidi has put in so much effort to give us a satisfying account on the Bombay blasts. He has nearly spent four years into research on this subject, interviewing several hundreds of police officials, lawyers, judges, eye witnesses, the accused people, the offenders, and journalists on that day who covered those events. He also referred hundreds of newspaper articles, press release notes, and judgment copies, charge sheets filed by the local Bombay Police and charge sheets filed by the CBI department etc… The level of the research that author had put into shaping up this book must be immensely respected.

As far as the content of the book goes, it has every detail including what led those terrorists to take such a route to become traitors and cause havoc in their own country. It is true that, the religious motives was the prime factor here. The 1992 Babri Masjid demolition was the root cause of all this, has to be the trigger point for all of these. This has followed by the communal riots in Bombay that led to the loss of hundreds of lives within no time and causing great damage to their lives personally. However, few people that had faith in the country’s police and judicial laws were waiting patiently to seek justice. But, few people took the other route to avenge their attackers. Hence, this infamous 1993 Bombay blasts on 12^th March, Friday, have happened.

The Memon family were believed to have suffered a considerable damage as per the book. So, the Memons took it their hearts and few infamous people in their family started to plot a revenge. Among them includes, the prime offender, the master mind of serial blasts Tiger Memon, which was financially managed carefully by his younger brother, the CA grad, Yakub Memon, who was recently hanged for this activity in July 2015.  The entire attack was presided and observed at the hands of another most wanted criminal for India, the Dawood Ibrahim.

The book explains categorically the way Tiger Memon planned the attacks and how he recruited his mujahideen’s a.k.a fighters to go with him to avenge their Muslim brothers. This group of people that Tiger has recruited for his mission had received arms training in Pakistan. This was carefully planned out by Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon. All these young people, probably in their early 20’s had no idea for what they are subjecting themselves into. All they thought was, they are fighting against the infidels and so must they be fighting a holy war or jihad. Tiger had planned carefully to send all these people to Pakistan secretly via Dubai, at which, he succeeded. After their training on handling AK 56, hand grenades, fixing timer bombs, handling pencil grenades, using rocket launchers, setting up RDX, Gelatin, etc… these youth returned to Bombay to carry out the operation, which the world will remember as one of the ghastly incidents of blasts that have happened.

As the book progresses further, we get to see the details of how these terrorists have chalked out their plans and the various places that they decided to plant the Bombs etc… They have chosen some of the busiest places in Bombay such as BSE office, Zaveri bazar, Shiv Sena’s office, and Air India office, several five star hotels, busy streets (for planting the Bombs in Bikes), etc…. So in each of these places they have set the timer bombs, so that, the explosions keep happening every 15 minutes or so. This has continued for almost two to three hours at seven to nine places.

As in case of every crime scene, the perpetrators leaves behind a heavy amount of clues. So is the case of Bombay blasts. The eminent police officers of Bombay led by Samra, CP Singh, Rakesh Maria, Nadagouda and likes of people who laid out a perfect plan for the investigation came out victoriously by nabbing their first link within the 48 hours of blasts. What followed later is an absolutely riveting account from the book that should be read with absolute admiration. Catching a suspect and catching the actual offender is not an easy task pertaining to the communal tensions that was slowly rising up in the city. In this event, the Bombay police has made some tremendous progress which has to be appreciated by everyone who reads the book.

Many years have passed since this incident, and several years of trial have been conducted and punishments has been announced. Hundreds of accused were arrested, released and prosecuted under the law. The most prized catch was the Bollywood movie producer’s duo and star actor Sanjay Dutt in illegal arms possession has sent ripples across the movie industry during 90’s. The younger brother of Tiger Memon, Yakub Memon’s arrest and his only interview, his approval and denial of his family involvement, his trial, the capital punishment and execution is all part of the history now.

The only thing that still rings in every reader's mind as they read through the book is, the Tiger Memon and Dawood Ibrahim. They are still alive and living in Pakistan or Dubai. Several Indian governments had come and passed, but, none of them had tried their best to put pressure on these countries to repatriate these criminals to India. We can just hope that, at least one strong government would be able to succeed in this case.

My Rating:

5/5