Local media reported the Home Ministry had called the explosions a terror attack. No Home Ministry officials could be independently reached for comment.

Television footage showed dozens of police officials, several of them armed, at the sites of the explosion and at least one car with its windows shattered.

An official at the city's Police Control Room said one blast was in the crowded neighborhood of Dadar in central Mumbai. The others were at the famed jewelry market Jhaveri Bazaar and the busy business district of Opera House, both in southern Mumbai and several miles (kilometers) apart.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of office policy.

"It must be a bomb blast," Chhagan Bhujbal, a state minister told a TV news channel.

The explosions took place around 7 p.m., when all the neighborhoods would have been packed with office workers and commuters.

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The special court that heard the case into the assault, which India blames on the Pakistan-based militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, said it would issue a verdict on May 3.

On trial are Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani that Indian investigators allege is the only surviving gunman from the rampage in India's financial hub in November 2008. Also on trial are two Indian co-defendants accused of helping plot the attacks.

All three are charged with 12 criminal counts, including murder and waging war against India. If convicted they could face the death penalty.

Indian courts are notorious for delays in dispensing justice, with trials often taking years to go to court and moving slowly through the system once there. But this case was made top priority because of the enormity of the assault.

"We have closed the trial of Mohammed Ajmal Kasab in the shortest possible time -- less than a year," said Ujjwal Nikam, the public prosecutor. The prosecution examined some 610 witnesses since the trial began in April.

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