Mumbai police move a charred body from the blast site in 1993 (India Today Archive)
Exactly 28 years ago, 12 bomb explosions ripped across Bombay, as the city of Mumbai was known then. Blast waves from the explosion travelling at supersonic speeds turned pieces of metal and concrete into deadly missiles that killed 257 Mumbaikars and maimed over 1,400 others. The March 12 Bombay bombings, as they came to be called, shattered five-star hotels, the Bombay stock exchange and the regional passport office. They were among the earliest versions of what the US now calls Complex Coordinated Terrorist Attacks (CCTA). Until Al Qaeda’s hijack-suicide bombings of September 11, 2001, these were the most devastating serial bomb attacks on any city, carried out using military-grade explosives.