INDIA executed convicted bomb plotter Yakub Memon on Thursday for conspiring in the nation’s deadliest attack, a series of blasts that killed hundreds in Mumbai more than two decades ago.

    Memon was hanged at Nagpur jail in the western state of Maharashtra on his 53rd birthday after India’s president and Supreme Court rejected 11th-hour appeals for clemency.

    “It is complete. Yakub Memon was hanged today at 7:00 a.m. (1:30 GMT),” Nagpur police sub-inspector R.V Halami said.

    Memon, a former accountant, was convicted of plotting a series of coordinated bomb attacks that rocked India’s financial capital Mumbai in March 1993, killing 257 people and injuring around 700 more.

    The Bombay Stock Exchange, the offices of Air India and a luxury hotel were among about a dozen targets of the blasts.

    They were believed to have been staged by Mumbai’s Muslim-dominated underworld in retaliation for anti-Muslim violence that had killed more than 1,000 people a few months earlier.

    Security was tight near the targets and at sensitive areas across Mumbai on Thursday, with heavily armed police visible outside Memon’s former home.

    Memon and two of his brothers were convicted in 2006 by a specially-designated court using controversial anti-terror legislation that was introduced after the 1993 attacks and is no longer on the statute books.

    The Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act lapsed after two years and was never revived, with activists accusing the government of using it to harass Muslims.

    Memon was the only one of 11 people found guilty over the atrocity to have his death sentence upheld on appeal. The others had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment.

    He denied any involvement in the blasts during a staggered trial and appeal process that bitterly divided opinion in India and led to calls from rights activists and an ex-judge for his life to be spared.

    (SD-Agencies)