The trial of the Mumbai serial blasts case of 1993 has entered the final lap, with the specially designated TADA court awarding death sentences to those held guilty of planting the car bombs that resulted in the mayhem and loss of life fourteen years ago.

S. Hussain Zaidi explains some of the legal intricacies of the most watched trial in the country

• Why is the 1993 Mumbai blasts trial unique in the annals of India’s legal history?

First of all, because of the enormous scale of the terrorist act. Ten bombs, causing loss of 257 lives, leaving over 700 injured. The entire city of Mumbai came to a standstill for that day.

The trial has found a place in record books on account of its sheer length — it has gone on for 14 years. There are other firsts: a chargesheet running into 10,000 pages, two trucks needed to transport documents to court, one portion of Arthur Road Jail had to be carved out to make it the TADA court, the judge took over 14,000 pages to record the court evidence and another 3,000 pages to write the verdict.

• Some lawyers have raised questions about the death sentence being handed out after 14 years of incarceration. Why so?

There is an apex court judgment — Javed Pawale v/s state of Maharashtra — in which the death sentence pronounced against Pawale was not executed for almost a year. The court said that the accused is hanging “under the Sword of Damocles” and that it was not desirable to hang him now. Therefore he was sentenced for life.

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