The 1998 Coimbatore bombings occurred on Saturday, February 14, 1998, in the city of Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. 46 persons - 35 men, 10 women and one child - were killed and over 200 injured in 13 bomb attacks in 11 places, all of them within a 12 km radius, 4 bombs were planted at R S Puram area, two near Bus Stand, 1 near Coimbatore Medical College Hospital and at Ukkadam area. These car bombs was the work of Muslim fundamentalist group "Al Umma" which had a strong presence in Coimbatore.
The bombings were apparently in retaliation to the earlier riots in the city the previous year, when Hindu gangs and Fundamentalist Muslim groups clashed with each other following the murder of a traffic policeman named "Selvaraj", by a member of the radical Islamist group Al Umma (The Ummah).
The first of the serial bombs exploded at 3.50 p.m. on Shanmugham Road in R.S. Puram, 100 metres from the venue of an election meeting that was to be addressed by Bharatiya Janata Party president L.K. Advani. There were allegations that suicide bombers were ready to target L.K.Advani on that day.
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The ruling party at that time, the D.M.K came under severe criticism for this incident.
As a fallout, the Muslim fundamendalist group Al Umma was banned in Tamil Nadu within a few days. This incident came as a severe blow to the upcoming economy of Coimbatore. Real estate prices dropped temporarily, new investments to the city were temporarily halted. However, normalcy was restored within a few months.
The bomb blast also had strong political implications. The Bharatiya Janata Party candidate C. P. Radhakrishnan won by a record margin of over 1,00,000 votes in the 1998 Lok Sabha elections.
Abdul Nasir Madani, who is well known for his provoking speeches and chief of Islamist political outfit called PDP, was arrested by the police on 31 March 1998, for his alleged link with suspects of this blast. He was finally acquitted on 2007 August 1 and released from prison.
S. A. Basha, the mastermind of the blasts was found guilty of hatching a criminal conspiracy to trigger a series of explosions there on February 14, 1998 and to create enmity between the two communities."[1]