Indian court blasts kill lawyers

A series of co-ordinated explosions ripped through courts in three north Indian cities today killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more.

The victims of the blasts in Lucknow, Varanasi and Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh state were mostly lawyers.

Authorities blamed the attacks on militants trying to spark unrest between India’s Hindu majority and Muslim minority

At least seven lawyers were killed in three explosions in Varanasi, one of Hinduism’s holiest cities .

At least nine lawyers were killed and 45 more people were injured in three explosions in Varanasi, one of Hinduism’s holiest cities.

At least two of those bombs were attached to bicycles, police said.

In Faizabad, a pair of bombs killed four lawyers and injured about 14 others. One of the bombs was on a motorbike.

Faizabad is near the town of Ayodhya, where Hindu extremists destroyed the 16th century Babri Mosque in 1992, sparking widespread Hindu-Muslim riots.

There was one explosion in Lucknow but no reports of deaths or injuries there.

A spokesman for the state’s Home Ministry, said the blasts went off less than 15 minutes apart inside court complexes.

Indian court complexes are crowded, chaotic places, with lawyers often setting up small outdoor “offices” in makeshift, open-walled shacks built in courtyards. Many of the bombs apparently went off in such courtyards.

“It’s a conspiracy ... this is the handiwork of some group that wants to disturb communal harmony in the country,” the junior federal home minister, Sriprakash Jaiswal, said. “They may have targeted the courts because large crowds gather in courthouses here.”

But Padam Kriti, a spokesman of the Uttar Pradesh Bar Association, said the state’s lawyers had decided earlier this year not to defend any terror suspects, and “it looks like” that decision may have been behind blasts.

India has been hit by a series of explosions over the past two years. In August two bombs killed 43 people in the southern city of Hyderabad. In July 2006, bombs in seven Mumbai commuter trains killed more than 200 people.