CRIME REPORT:"1993 BOMB BLAST"

India has executed Yakub Memon, the man convicted of financing the deadly 1993 Mumbai bombings. Columnist Bachi Karkaria reflects on how the bombings changed India's financial and entertainment capital forever.

Two hours and 10 minutes was all it took to knock the swagger out of Mumbai, then called Bombay.

Between 1.30 and 3.40 on that Friday afternoon of 12 March, 1993, the city detonated into a nightmare. It would wake up in bloodied disbelief, charred and chastened.

The 13 bombs which exploded in quick succession brought the city's most iconic buildings to their knees, beginning with the symbol of its financial supremacy, the Bombay Stock Exchange.

The explosions ripped through the Air India building in the south to the Sea Rock hotel at Land's End in the west, a strip of land that juts into the sea. The Plaza cinema owned by Bollywood legend V Shantaram, and the Century Bazar belonging to the Birlas - who along with the Tatas, were India's first business family - were left with gaping, smouldering holes.

The headquarters of the right-wing Hindu Shiv Sena party was an obvious target because the blasts were revenge for the religious riots of December 1992 and January 1993.