About 5:30 pm on May 21, 1996, Pinky Sood was spending the day at home — keeping her 12-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son busy preparing for dinner — when a phone call from a relative moved the ground beneath her feet. The explosion rocked Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar market, where her husband, Rakesh Kumar Sood, had a tire shop. “You should check, Pinky,” her cousin told her. She was 30 years old at the time.
“I rushed to the market,” said Pinky, now 60, sitting inside her home in Amar Colony. “There was smoke, fire and chaos everywhere. I could see our entire shop destroyed but I had no idea where Soud Sahab was.”
It has been 30 years since the explosion that killed 13 people and injured 39 others. According to police and court documents obtained by HT, a Maruti car loaded with RDX exploded near a park in Lajpat Nagar Central Market around 6:30 pm.
Hours after the blast, the terrorist Jammu Kashmir Muslim Front claimed responsibility for the attack on national television, police said.
The explosion occurred five days after Atal Bihari Vajpayee began his first term as Prime Minister, which lasted 13 days. The next day, another bus explosion, also claimed by the JKIF, occurred in Rajasthan’s Dausa district, killing 14 people.
For Pinky, a sleepless night awaited her as she ran from one hospital to another and then back to the market in search of her husband. At about 11 a.m. the next day, Pinky was told that her husband had died.
In these 30 years, Pinky never once entered the courthouse while the explosion case was ongoing – and she doesn’t regret it. “I was suddenly the head of the family, a mother and father to my children, and I had to run his business. Who had time to get justice? I had to come to terms with what had happened… These are painful memories and I had a life to rebuild,” she said.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, the family received… $1 lakh as compensation from the central government, HT reported at the time.
Aside from this financial assistance, the process of rebuilding lives has been left entirely to the victims. “Two and three months after the accident, I took over the job because I had to feed my children… The first step was to repair the shop, which took about two months. It was the employees who helped me navigate an unfamiliar world after Sood Sahab’s death,” she said.
For Kuldeep Kumar, 52, general secretary of the Lajpat Nagar Traders’ Union, the horror of that afternoon is still just as vivid. Kumar, who owns a textile shop in Lajpat Nagar, was near the blast site when the blast occurred.
“When the explosion happened, I had just left my friend Umesh Muqad’s shop, which was very close to where the explosion occurred,” he recalls.
At first, many thought a gas cylinder had exploded. “Within a minute, we realized it was a car explosion and it was planned,” he said.
He immediately rushed towards the flames to save his friend. “I saw the fire spreading quickly so I took him out,” Kumar said. “I told him, ‘You can only build everything again if you stay alive.’”
But not everyone fled. Kumar still remembers the man who ran back to his burning shop to retrieve the money he had left behind.
According to Kumar, the market’s narrow and overgrown lanes also hampered rescue efforts. He said: “I still remember how the fire engines were not able to reach the place early, while the police arrived within minutes.”
Three decades later, the visual images remain impossible to erase. He said: “The scene was horrific, bodies and people bleeding everywhere, tears and people crying everywhere, a slipper here, a piece of cloth there. I can never forget.”
The market remained closed for several days after the attack, and traders say its psychological and economic impact continued for several months. “For 3 or 4 days, stores did not open, and the impact could be felt for a year after that,” Kumar said.
Delhi Police registered FIR 517 in the case in 1996. Court documents showed that shop owner Subhash Chand Kattar told police that the blast occurred just 10 feet away from his shop. Investigators later found that the car had been stolen from the Nizamuddin East area three days earlier.
The Special Cell and Crime Branch discovered that the accused obtained explosive materials from multiple places and made a failed attempt to bomb near Dulhan Dupatta shop on May 19 before carrying out the deadly attack on May 21.
Hours later, JKIF claimed responsibility on national television. Investigators traced the calls made to TV channels from Kashmir and arrested the suspects linked to the numbers. The investigation later pointed to a larger network that allegedly included JKIF operatives, ISI and D Company. Court records identified JKIF leaders Bilal Ahmed Baig and Tiger Memon as key conspirators.
The police brought charges against 17 defendants, and only 11 were arrested. In 2023, the Supreme Court upheld the convictions of four defendants, calling the attack an “international conspiracy” aimed at destabilizing India.
