Court allows prosecution to withdraw plea to make 4 more ex-cops accused in Khwaja Yunus death case

Khwaja Yunus was last seen on January 7, 2003 by the men arrested with him. File Photo

A local court on Wednesday allowed the prosecution in the alleged custodial death of Khwaja Yunus, a bomb blast accused, to withdraw its earlier application for making four more policemen, all retired now, as accused in the 2003 case.

Dismissed Assistant Police Inspector Sachin Waze and three other former cops are already facing trial in the case.

On December 2, 2002, a bomb blast occurred at the Ghatkopar Railway Station in Mumbai, killing two persons.

Yunus (then 27), a software engineer, was named an accused in the blast and arrested from Maharashtra's Parbhani district. He died allegedly in police custody in 2003.

Recently appointed special public prosecutor (SPP) in the case, Pradeep Gharat, said the issue of prosecuting the new set of accused was pending before the Supreme Court (SC).

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It is, therefore, submitted that the application of section 319 of the CrPC (Code Of Criminal Procedure), to make four more policemen accused in the case, is not pressed at this stage with a liberty to file a fresh plea depending on the outcome in the matter in the apex court, the SPP said.

As per the CrPC section 319, a court can proceed against other persons appearing to be guilty of an offence.

Finding merits in the prosecution's arguments, additional sessions judge V M Pathade allowed its plea for withdrawal of the application.

Four former Mumbai police officials, including Waze, are facing trial in the case on charges of murder, voluntarily causing grievous hurt to extort confession, fabricating evidence and criminal conspiracy.

In April 2018, then-SPP Dhiraj Mirajkar had filed a plea in the sessions court seeking summons to be issued against retired police officer Praful Bhosale and three other former cops and make them face trial on murder charges.

The application was filed after a key prosecution witness, Mohammed Abdul Mateen, had deposed before the court claiming he had seen Bhosale, then-assistant police inspector Hemant Desai and two other cops, assaulting Yunus in police lock-up.

The Maharashtra government, through a notification in 2018, cancelled advocate Mirajkar's appointment as the SPP in the case.

During his deposition in January 2018, Mateen, a co-accused in the blast case who was later acquitted of all charges, had told the court that Yunus had been brutally assaulted by four police officials of the Ghatkopar Crime Branch.

The prosecution alleged that the software engineer was tortured and this led to his death in police custody.

The Mumbai police team that had arrested Yunus, however, claimed he escaped after the vehicle in which he was being transported met with an accident in January 2003.

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