Saquib Abdul Hamid Nachan was the planter of all three bombs that exploded in the city between December 2002 and March 2003. He is accused of being a hardened radical, who recruited men from the Muslim community and sent them to Pakistan to receive arms training. Investigations revealed that he had links with the Inter Services Intelligence of Pakistan and also fought with the Afghan mujahideen against the Russians in the 80s.
Saquib was in jail from 1992 till 2001 after he was found guilty by the Supreme Court in a terror case. After his acquittal, he was charged with organising the triple blasts in 2002-2003. In 2004, he was forced to represent himself in court after the local bar association in Bhiwandi-Thane refused to take up his case. He was accused of shooting two lawyers of the association, but was later acquitted.
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The police refer to Nachan as a ‘completely motivated, hardened radical’ gifted with extraordinary skills when it came to convincing people to see things his way. His skill helped him recruit people for his module and have also elevated him to the status of a hero in his native Padgha.
In 2003, when a team of Crime Branch officials, led by ‘encounter specialist’ Pradeep Sharma, went to Padgha on his trail, a large mob surrounded them, assaulted them, and even snatched their weapons away, and the team had to come back empty-handed.
Saquib was the third child of 11 children, born to a family in Borivali. His family is believed to own large land holdings along the Mumbai-Nashik highway. He is a commerce graduate. He joined the Jamaat-e-Islami and then the SIMI and went on to become the general secretary of the banned organisation. In the triple blasts case, Saquib has been booked under section 4 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act and section 3, 7 and 25 of the Arms Act.
Muzammil Akhtar Abdul Rahim Ansari, born in 1974, has two sisters and two brothers. He is an engineering graduate from a college at Malegaon. He moved to Mumbai in 1994. He was then working as a mechanical engineer at a private firm in Andheri. Muzammil has been booked under relevant sections of the POTA, Explosives Substances Act, IPC, and the Indian Railways Act. He is the only accused among the nine others, who is expected to be given the death sentence.