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Diamond trade the target?

By Our Special Correspondent





MUMBAI SEPT. 4. Last Monday's twin blasts in Mumbai that claimed 53 lives are being increasingly classified as economic terrorism and police here have started taking measures to address the new threat.

Mumbai is not only the commercial capital of the country but also the largest source of cut and polished diamonds to the world. And, precious stones have topped the list of real exports for decades. The city is as important as Antwerp in Belgium and, according to trade sources, eight out of ten diamonds bought in the world originate from India, particularly Mumbai.

The Zaveri Bazar (Jewellery Market) blast shows that the gem and jewellery trade of the country is under attack, like it was on March 12, 1993, along with the Mumbai Stock Exchange, another economic target. The Srikrishna Commission said that Zaveri Bazar was one of the sites of ten major blasts. Explosives went off at three other places, two in Dhanji Street and Shaikh Memon Street in Zaveri Bazar. Though the diamond industry is spread across western India, the trade is located in a few buildings of the Opera House area in south Mumbai, a little away from Zaveri Bazar.

The Assistant Commissioner of Police, Satish Gaikawad, on Wednesday addressed a meeting of diamond traders and advised them to take adequate security measures. These included reinforcement of the buildings' kerbs, installation of metal detectors, distribution of identity cards to drivers of their cars and identity stickers for the cars and making the area out of bounds for hawkers.

Police believe that the terrorists mistook Zaveri Bazar as the centre of the diamond trade but they would not repeat the mistake. The Opera House is a congested commercial district surrounded by residential areas. The contributing factor is that most of the traders are Gujaratis.

India does not mine diamonds. The raw or rough diamonds are imported and sent to factories in different States for cutting and polishing. The finished diamonds come to the traders in Mumbai. Each trader has a strong room in his office to store the diamonds. Diamonds worth billions of dollars are stored in these few buildings at any given time, though this is only a transit point.

Traders have taken security measures to guard their wares. All their employees — assorters, valuers and packers — have identity cards, and entries to the buildings are highly regulated and guarded. But these have been inadequate against a terrorist attack. Now, the diamond merchants have been advised to employ detectives and plainclothesmen.



Diamond traders tried to downplay the terrorist threat. Sanjay Kothari, president of the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council, told The Hindu that it was casual advice of the police and there was no threat to the trade.​
 

Three bombs kill at least 21 in Mumbai​

By Jui Chakravorty, Rajendra Jadhav
6 Min Read

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Three bombs rocked crowded districts of Mumbai during rush hour on Wednesday, killing at least 21 people in the biggest militant attack on India’s financial capital since 2008 assaults blamed on Pakistan-based militants.



Policemen surround a vehicle which was damaged at the site of a bomb explosion in the Dadar area of Mumbai July 13, 2011. REUTERS/Stringer
India has remained jittery about the threat of militant strikes, especially since the Nov. 26, 2008 attacks that killed 166 people and raised tensions with nuclear-armed arch rival Pakistan.
At least 141 people were wounded on Wednesday and the death toll was at least 21, the Home Ministry said in statements about what it called “terror attacks” centred mainly on Mumbai’s jewellery markets.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts.
“This is another attack on the heart of India, heart of Mumbai. We will fully meet the challenge, we are much better prepared than 26/11,” Prithviraj Chavan, the state’s chief minister, told NDTV broadcaster, referring to the 2008 attacks.
Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram also said “terrorists” were to blame.
“The blast occurred at about 6.45 p.m. (1315 GMT) within minutes of each other. Therefore, we infer that this was a coordinated attack by terrorists,” Chidambaram told reporters.
At least one car and a motorbike were used in the coordinated attacks in which improvised explosive devices were believed to have been used, officials said.
“This tactic is much more in line with those used by more amateurish groups such as the Indian Mujahideen, who have targeted crowded urban areas before,” Stratfor, a strategic affairs think tank, said in a statement.

Television images showed blaring ambulances carrying away the wounded and others being loaded into civilian vans to take them to hospital. Other images showed bodies lying among glass and metal debris in narrow streets.
At the Dadar area in central Mumbai, one of the explosions left car windows shattered and uprooted electric poles. Police used sniffer dogs to look for clues while the public helped paramedics carry away some of the injured.

JEWELLERY MARKETS​

The biggest blast was at the Opera House, which once housed operas and is now an area where diamond jewellery is sold and a hub for diamond traders. Pakistani-based militants carried out the bloody rampage in 2008 near this area.
“We came outside, and the area was filled with black smoke. There were bodies lying all over the street, there was lots of blood ... We saw many bodies missing arms and missing legs,” said Aagam Doshi, a local merchant and witness, told Reuters.
“We began helping get the wounded on to motorcycles of diamond merchants ... There were diamonds lying on the road everywhere.”
Another blast, also in south Mumbai, was at the Zaveri Bazaar, India’s largest bullion market, which was hit twice in the past.
The third blast was at Dadar, the crowded centre of the city, near the main railway tracks.

“When I heard of the blast, I tried to call because I knew he (husband) was in Dadar. Next thing I know someone picked up the phone and said he was admitted to KEM (hospital) so I came here,” said Rinku Vishwakarma, whose husband is a carpenter.
“I have no idea how badly he is injured. I’m looking frantically for someone to help,” she said, crying.
There was no immediate indication any Pakistan group was involved. But any suggestion of attributing blame to Islamabad would complicate a fraught relationship with India and further unravel ties with the United States, which has withheld some military aid to Pakistan to pressure it to buckle down in the war on terror.

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani swiftly condemned the blasts in a statement.

OBAMA OFFERS HELP​

U.S. President Barack Obama also condemned the attacks and offered support to bring the perpetrators to justice.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she would continue with plans to visit India next week for a regular round of high-level talks and extended her own condolences to the Indian government and people.
“I believe it is more important then ever that we stand with India, dig deep in our partnership and reaffirm our commitment to the shared struggle against terrorism,” Clinton said in an appearance in Washington with Russia’s visiting foreign minister.

The U.N. Security Council said it “condemned in the strongest terms” the attacks.
“Any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed,” said the Council statement, which was read to reporters by Germany’s U.N. ambassador Peter Wittig.
The attacks took place as New Delhi and Islamabad hold a series of talks to normalise relations. The foreign affairs ministers were due to meet later this month.
They came two days after the fifth anniversary of a series of train bombings in Mumbai that killed 188 people, many of them diamond merchants, an attack also blamed on Pakistan-based militants.
New Delhi says Pakistan-based groups aid and train militants to carry out attacks against India, a claim Islamabad rejects.
The Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, long focused on fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, was blamed for the 2008 attacks.
Several bomb attacks in large Indian cities in recent years have been tied to the Indian Mujahideen, a home-grown Islamist group said to have support from Pakistan-based militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.

The home ministry ordered security heightened across the country.
Mumbai has over the years been the target of several attacks, including serial bomb blasts in 1993 that killed at least 260 people at the stock exchange and other areas.
 
swesh said:

Three bombs kill at least 21 in Mumbai​

By Jui Chakravorty, Rajendra Jadhav
6 Min Read

MUMBAI (Reuters) - Three bombs rocked crowded districts of Mumbai during rush hour on Wednesday, killing at least 21 people in the biggest militant attack on India’s financial capital since 2008 assaults blamed on Pakistan-based militants.



Policemen surround a vehicle which was damaged at the site of a bomb explosion in the Dadar area of Mumbai July 13, 2011. REUTERS/Stringer
India has remained jittery about the threat of militant strikes, especially since the Nov. 26, 2008 attacks that killed 166 people and raised tensions with nuclear-armed arch rival Pakistan.
At least 141 people were wounded on Wednesday and the death toll was at least 21, the Home Ministry said in statements about what it called “terror attacks” centred mainly on Mumbai’s jewellery markets.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts.
“This is another attack on the heart of India, heart of Mumbai. We will fully meet the challenge, we are much better prepared than 26/11,” Prithviraj Chavan, the state’s chief minister, told NDTV broadcaster, referring to the 2008 attacks.
Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram also said “terrorists” were to blame.
“The blast occurred at about 6.45 p.m. (1315 GMT) within minutes of each other. Therefore, we infer that this was a coordinated attack by terrorists,” Chidambaram told reporters.
At least one car and a motorbike were used in the coordinated attacks in which improvised explosive devices were believed to have been used, officials said.
“This tactic is much more in line with those used by more amateurish groups such as the Indian Mujahideen, who have targeted crowded urban areas before,” Stratfor, a strategic affairs think tank, said in a statement.

Television images showed blaring ambulances carrying away the wounded and others being loaded into civilian vans to take them to hospital. Other images showed bodies lying among glass and metal debris in narrow streets.
At the Dadar area in central Mumbai, one of the explosions left car windows shattered and uprooted electric poles. Police used sniffer dogs to look for clues while the public helped paramedics carry away some of the injured.

JEWELLERY MARKETS​

The biggest blast was at the Opera House, which once housed operas and is now an area where diamond jewellery is sold and a hub for diamond traders. Pakistani-based militants carried out the bloody rampage in 2008 near this area.
“We came outside, and the area was filled with black smoke. There were bodies lying all over the street, there was lots of blood ... We saw many bodies missing arms and missing legs,” said Aagam Doshi, a local merchant and witness, told Reuters.
“We began helping get the wounded on to motorcycles of diamond merchants ... There were diamonds lying on the road everywhere.”
Another blast, also in south Mumbai, was at the Zaveri Bazaar, India’s largest bullion market, which was hit twice in the past.
The third blast was at Dadar, the crowded centre of the city, near the main railway tracks.

“When I heard of the blast, I tried to call because I knew he (husband) was in Dadar. Next thing I know someone picked up the phone and said he was admitted to KEM (hospital) so I came here,” said Rinku Vishwakarma, whose husband is a carpenter.
“I have no idea how badly he is injured. I’m looking frantically for someone to help,” she said, crying.
There was no immediate indication any Pakistan group was involved. But any suggestion of attributing blame to Islamabad would complicate a fraught relationship with India and further unravel ties with the United States, which has withheld some military aid to Pakistan to pressure it to buckle down in the war on terror.

Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani swiftly condemned the blasts in a statement.

OBAMA OFFERS HELP​

U.S. President Barack Obama also condemned the attacks and offered support to bring the perpetrators to justice.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she would continue with plans to visit India next week for a regular round of high-level talks and extended her own condolences to the Indian government and people.
“I believe it is more important then ever that we stand with India, dig deep in our partnership and reaffirm our commitment to the shared struggle against terrorism,” Clinton said in an appearance in Washington with Russia’s visiting foreign minister.

The U.N. Security Council said it “condemned in the strongest terms” the attacks.
“Any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivation, wherever, whenever and by whomsoever committed,” said the Council statement, which was read to reporters by Germany’s U.N. ambassador Peter Wittig.
The attacks took place as New Delhi and Islamabad hold a series of talks to normalise relations. The foreign affairs ministers were due to meet later this month.
They came two days after the fifth anniversary of a series of train bombings in Mumbai that killed 188 people, many of them diamond merchants, an attack also blamed on Pakistan-based militants.
New Delhi says Pakistan-based groups aid and train militants to carry out attacks against India, a claim Islamabad rejects.
The Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, long focused on fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, was blamed for the 2008 attacks.
Several bomb attacks in large Indian cities in recent years have been tied to the Indian Mujahideen, a home-grown Islamist group said to have support from Pakistan-based militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.

The home ministry ordered security heightened across the country.
Mumbai has over the years been the target of several attacks, including serial bomb blasts in 1993 that killed at least 260 people at the stock exchange and other areas.
Click to expand...
I can't seem to imagine we had bomb blast every month during khangress regime only targeting hindus.
Yet some foolish hindus wants to vote them
 
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