By TwoCircles.net Staff Reporter
Mumbai: The probe into the custodial death of the Ghatkopar blast accused Khwaja Yunus is to prolong yet as the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has asked from the state government to form a special investigation team to probe the death as some influential officers may be involved in it.
Hindustan Times daily has quoted the additional director general of police SPS Yadav as saying: ‘…there are influential officers involved. There can be others too.’ He also said that after going through the papers of the case the police realized the need for a specialized team to probe it and accordingly they forwarded a letter to the government to form an SIT.
According to the report the CID had also written to the state director general of police last month demanding the same.
Khwaja Yunus, a software engineer working for a Dubai-based company was arrested by police, in December 2002 from Marathwada’s Parbhani district, for his alleged involvement in the Ghatkopar BEST bus bomb blast on December 2, 2002. As per the reports, he was killed in police custody on December 23, 2002.
While police had claimed that on the night of January 6, 2003 when they were taking Yunus to Aurangabad for further probe, he managed to escape when their jeep met with an accident in Ahmednagar district.
However, father of Yunus filed a petition in Bombay High Court demanding a fair probe in the case and consequently the case was handed over to the state CID in March 2003, which admitted that Yunus was killed in custody and found 12 police officers involved in his murder.
As per the permission of the state government the investigating agency in November 2008 chargesheeted only four policemen – API Sachin Vaze and constable Rajendra Tiwari, Rajaram Nikam and Sunil Desai – for murdering Yunus and destruction of evidence along with other sections of the Indian Panel Code.
On January 19, 2009, the Bombay High Court had come down heavily on the state government and the CID in the case and had asked why the action was not being taken against all the police officers.