[21] On 9 March 1993, three days before the bombings took place, a small-time criminal from the Bombay slum of Behrampada named Gul Noor Mohammad Sheikh (aka "Gullu") was detained at the Nag Pada police station.
Gullu was one of the 19 men handpicked for weapons training by Tiger Memon, a silver smuggler whose office was burnt in the riots.
He confessed to his role in the riots, his training in Pakistan, and a conspiracy underway to bomb major locations around the city, including the Bombay Stock Exchange, Sahar International Airport and the Shiv.
Gullu's arrest advanced the date of the bombings which had originally been planned to coincide with the Shiv Jayanti celebrations in April 1993.
[26] Banks, the regional passport office, the Air India Building, and a major shopping complex were also hit.
[33] He attempted to justify this deception by claiming that it was a move to prevent communal riots by falsely portraying that both Hindu and Muslim communities in the city had been affected adversely.
The bombings caused a major rift within D-Company, the most powerful criminal organisation in the Bombay underworld, headed by Dawood Ibrahim.
Infuriated at the bombings, Ibrahim's right-hand man, Chhotta Rajan, split from the organisation and took most of the leadership-level Hindu aides with him, including Sadhu, Jaspal Singh and Mohan Kotiyan.
In 2006, 100 of 129 accused were convicted by Justice PD Kode of the specially designated Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) court.
[40] On 12 September 2006, the special TADA court convicted four members of the Memon family[40] on charges of conspiring and abetting acts of terror.
Correspondents said Tiger owned a restaurant in Mumbai and was allegedly closely associated with Dawood Ibrahim, the suspected mastermind.
Two of the accused, Mohammed Umar Khatlab and Badshah Khan (a pseudonym given by the prosecution to hide his real identity), turned state informers.
[43] Asghar Yusuf Mukadam and Shahnawaz Qureshi, who were found guilty of involvement in the bombings pleaded for leniency, claiming that they were not terrorists and were emotionally driven to participate in the act.
Ujjwal Nikam who was earlier the Special Prosecutor in these cases was replaced by Deepak Salvi to continue with the trial in the light of the subsequent developments.
[46] On 16 June 2017 gangsters Mustafa Dossa and Firoz Khan were found guilty of conspiracy, which can carry the death penalty.