In this photograph taken on February 13, 2010 bystanders look at the destroyed German Bakery restaurant in Pune. A local court yesterday convicted a man over the blast which killed 17 people and injured dozens.
Agencies/Pune, Maharashtra
A court here yesterday convicted a cyber cafe worker of murder over a bomb blast which ripped through a packed restaurant in Pune three years ago, killing 17 people.
Pune Sessions Court Special Judge M P Dhote found Mirza Himayat Baig guilty of criminal conspiracy and murder for the attack on the popular German Bakery restaurant where five foreigners were among those killed by a bomb in a rucksack left under a table.
“Baig has been found guilty of all the key charges. He was a co-conspirator,” special public prosecutor Raja Thakare said.
Baig’s sentence will be handed down on Thursday and he could face the death penalty for the bombing that also injured more than 60 people. Five co-accused are still at large, Thakare said.
The blast on February 13, 2010 in the restaurant located in an upscale area of Pune was the first major attack in India after the 2008 assault on Mumbai by gunmen that left 166 dead.
The bomb exploded while the bakery and restaurant was jammed with mainly young Indians and tourists.
Thakare said Baig, in his early 30s, was linked to the Indian Mujahideen, a home-grown group with links to militants in Pakistan, which the government had suspected of involvement in the blast.
Prosecutors had told the court the conspirators planned the attack at a meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where Baig was trained to make a bomb, but the defence team denied this and said he was not in Pune at the time of the blast.
“We will file an appeal to the high court,” Baig’s counsel A Rehman told reporters after the verdict was delivered.
The court upheld the prosecution contention that the blast was “a carefully planned and executed attack” calculated to terrorise the general public, causing extensive damage to life and property.
The prosecution said the primary objective of the terror attack was to undermine and reduce faith of the common people in the elected government and destabilise the system of law.
The special judge upheld the prosecution argument that the attack caused the deaths of foreign nationals, earning the country a bad name.
The explosion tore through the building, creating a huge hole in the wall measuring 6ft by 4ft and sending those inside fleeing screaming in panic for their lives.
Baig, who used to run a cyber cafe in Maharashtra, was arrested after several months of investigation, while police say a co-conspirator who planted the bomb is among those still at large, media reported.
Police took Baig into custody after finding explosives at his home in Latur in Maharashtra, according to local reports.
The German Bakery was popularly known as “Pune’s Cafe Leopold” - named after the hangout popular with tourists and young people in Mumbai, which was targeted in the 2008 attacks.
The restaurant was about 200m from an ashram, or religious retreat, specialising in meditation courses run by Swiss-based firm Osho International and popular with visitors.
It was also close to Chabad House, a Jewish cultural and religious centre run by the orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement, whose members were targeted in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
The café re-opened in February this year.
During the three-and-half-year-long trial, the prosecution examined 103 witnesses.
Pune was hit again last August by a string of low-intensity blasts that targeted a bustling restaurant and centrally located shopping area in the city, injuring one person.
