Three Muslim men have become the first people convicted of involvement in the 1993 Bombay bombings to be sentenced to death in one of the world’s longest-running criminal trials.

An Indian anti-terrorism court handed down the sentences today to Pervez Nasir Sheikh, Abdul Gani Ismail Turq and Mushtaq Tarani, who were found guilty of planting several bombs — one of 13 explosions in the heart of the country’s busy commercial capital that killed 257 people.

Pramod Kode, the presiding judge, has spent several months delivering sentences to the 123 convicted of carrying out India’s worst terrorist attack. Eighty-one people have so far been sentenced after a trial that has dragged on for 14 years — a long time even by the standards of India’s painfully cumbersome judicial system.

Turq was found guilty of planting a car bomb in a crowded market which killed 88 people and injured 159. Sheikh planted two bombs in a market and an hotel. Tarani caused extensive damage to a hotel with a suitcase bomb and placed a scooter packed with explosives in a crowded downtown street that did not detonate.

Justice Kode singled out Turk’s crime as “the most heinous” and said the men’s actions were “a disgrace to the Muslim religion”. Police believe the attacks were ordered by Dawood Ibrahim, a Dubai-based Muslim gangster, to avenge the demolition of the sacred 16th-century Babri mosque in northern India by Hindu fundamentalists in 1992.

Communal violence erupted in India after the mosque’s desecration, leaving 800 mostly Muslim people dead. Now India’s most wanted man, Ibrahim has managed to evade justice and is thought to be hiding in Pakistan, although Islamabad denies this.

Fourteen men have received life sentences for their involvement and knowledge of the bombings on March 12, 1993, while 64 others were sentenced to between three and ten years in prison.

Thirty-five suspects remain at large. Among those yet to be sentenced is the Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt, who was cleared of involvement in the bombings but faces up to three years in prison for illegally possessing arms.

Today's sentences in a trial that has involved more than 13,000 pages of evidence and 686 witnesses, were the first instances of capital punishment but the prosecutor has requested the death penalty for another 13 bombers. The Supreme Court still has to ratify the death sentences.

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