The special public prosecutor in the Khwaja Yunus custodial death case informed the sessions court on Wednesday that the prosecution would withdraw the application filed in 2018 to add four former police officers as accused.
Special public prosecutor Pradeep Gharat said that they had taken all available material into consideration and also the order of the Bombay high court, which upheld the decision to not grant prosecution sanction against the retired policemen.
“After considering all the aspects we have concluded that this is not a fit case where the four can be called to face prosecution at this stage,” Gharat said, adding the prosecution would make a formal application to this effect in the next hearing scheduled for August 25.
Gharat also informed the court about the Supreme Court order in January, expediting the hearing of the plea for making the four former officers accused and the objections raised by their lawyer.
The then prosecutor, Dhiraj Mirazkar, had in February 2018 filed the plea, requesting the court to summon Praful Bhosale, an encounter specialist, Hemant Desai, Rajaram Vhanmane, and Ashok Khot to face trial for allegedly murdering Khwaja Yunus, an accused in the Ghatkopar bomb blast case of December 2002.
The plea was moved after the prosecution examined key witness Abdul Mateen, who in his testimony mentioned the names of the four retired policemen. Mateen was also an accused in the Ghatkopar blast case.
Mirazkar was removed in April 2018 after the state government claimed that he was not instructed to move this plea.
Yunus, a software engineer working in Dubai, was picked up by police from Parbhani in Marathwada in December 2002 in connection with a bomb blast at Ghatkopar railway station in which two persons were killed and over 50 others were injured.
The prosecution alleged that Yunus was tortured in jail and this led to his death in custody. The police team, which had arrested Yunus, claimed that he escaped after the vehicle in which he was being transported met with an accident near Aurangabad in January 2003.
The state Criminal Investigation Department, which probed the case, had filed a chargesheet against 14 police officials, but the state government did not grant sanction to prosecute 10 of them. Dismissed police officer Sachin Waze and three constables are facing the charge of killing Yunus in their custody.
