Mumbai: The prosecution in the Khwaja Yunus custodial death case moved a plea before a court here on Thursday seeking to withdraw an earlier application to make another four policemen accused in the case. Dismissed policeman Sachin Waze and three others are already facing trial in the case.
On December 2, 2002, a bomb blast at Ghatkopar railway station in the metropolis killed two persons, after which Khwaja Yunus, a 27-year-old software engineer, was arrested from Maharashtra's Parbhani district later that month. He died in police custody in 2003.
Special public prosecutor Pradeep Gharat, who was recently appointed by the state to conduct the trial, said the subject of prosecuting this set of accused is pending in the Supreme Court.
It is therefore submitted the application under section 319 of Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) to make four policemen accused in the case is not pressed at this stage with liberty to file a fresh plea depending on the outcome at the apex court, the SPP said. As per section 319 of CrPC, the court can proceed against other persons appearing to be guilty of offence.
However, Chetan Mali, lawyer for Yunus' family, urged the court to dismiss the prosecution's plea for withdrawal of the application where they sought to prosecute the cops. Four former police officials, including dismissed personnel Sachin Waze, are facing trial on charges of murder, voluntarily causing grievous hurt to extort confession, fabricating evidence, and criminal conspiracy in the case.
In April 2018, previous prosecutor Dhiraj Mirajkar had filed a plea seeking that summons be issued against retired policeman Praful Bhosale and three others from the force and make them face trial on murder charges. The application was filed after key prosecution witness Mohammed Abdul Mateen had deposed before court claiming he had seen Bhosale, then assistant police inspector Hemant Desai and two other policemen assault Yunus in police lock-up.
Later that month, the state government cancelled advocate Mirajkar's appointment as special public prosecutor in the case. During his deposition in January 2018, Mateen, who was co-accused in the blast case but was later acquitted of all charges, had told the court Yunus was brutally assaulted by four police officials of the Ghatkopar Crime Branch unit. The police team that arrested Yunus, however, had claimed he escaped after the vehicle in which he was being transported met with an accident near Aurangabad (in Maharashtra) in January 2003. (PTI)
