Rain & Slowing Market Reduce Mumbai Industry Casualties

(IDEX Online News) – That it was a rainy day and that the Mumbai polished diamond market is showing signs of slowing down, helped reduce the casualties in two of the three bomb blasts in the city yesterday.

One bomb, in the Opera House district, went off just outside the side gate of the Pancharatna building that houses a large number of diamond offices. The street outside this side gate is usually crowded with small diamond brokers who do deals on the street.

At around 6:30 pm, they usually also congregate in even larger numbers to discuss the day’s dealings, eat street food and drink tea.

There were relatively few people on the street yesterday as it was a rainy day. In addition, many brokers left for home early, as the slowing market held no prospect of deals that might be clinched at the end of the day over tea and a bite to eat. As it is, however, many of the dead were diamond brokers and small dealers.

This was so even at Zaveri Bazaar, the jewelry retail and manufacturing hub of Mumbai. The bomb that went of here, was located at Khau Galli (literally “eating alley”), a narrow alley full of street food vendors and tea stalls. Rains kept the crowds down.

One jewelry manufacturer and retailer located at an adjacent street, told IDEX Online, “I had a lot of jewelry out when the blast went off. When we asked the people on the street, they first said a cooking gas cylinder had exploded on Khau Galli. It was only ten minutes later, when we heard of the blasts at Opera House and Dadar [a major mid-town commercial hub], that we realized that this was a bomb.”

At the time of reporting, the casualty numbers from all three blasts stood at 18 dead, 131 injured, 26 of them seriously injured.