Plea by Khwaja Yunus’s mother to make four more cops accused in case rejected

IN ITS detailed order in the Khwaja Yunus alleged custodial death case, the sessions court while rejecting the application of his mother seeking to add four more policemen as accused in the case, said that only the prosecutor in charge of the case has the authority to conduct the trial. Yunus’s mother, Asiya Begum, had moved an application to add four more policemen as accused during a hearing last month after the special public prosecutor, Pradip Gharat, moved a plea to withdraw a similar application made by the previous prosecutor in 2018. Asiya is an intervener in the case.

The court on September 7 rejected Begum’s application while allowing the prosecution to withdraw the plea made in 2018. The court’s detailed order was made available on Monday. The court said relied on relevant provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code to come to its conclusion. “….it would appear that it is the public prosecutor or the assistant public prosecutor, in charge of the case and advocate general has authority to conduct the trial and a private person has only a right to instruct a pleader to prosecute a person in court, in which case such pleader has to act under the directions of the prosecutor and with the permission of the court to submit written arguments after the evidence is closed in the case,” additional sessions judge V M Pathade said in his order. The court said that SPP Gharat is ‘competent’ to seek the withdrawal of the application.

Yunus, a software engineer from Parbhani, was arrested by the Mumbai police in December 2002 claiming his role in the Ghatkopar bomb blast earlier in the same month. He was last seen in police custody on January 6, 2003. In 2018, the first prosecution witness, Yunus’s co-accused at that time, named four policemen and said that they had assaulted Yunus to the extent that he was seen vomiting blood.

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Based on this, the previous special public prosecutor, Dhiraj Mirajkar, moved a plea in 2018 seeking to add four more policemen — retired ACP Praful Bhosale, Rajaram Vhanmane, Ashok Khot and Hemant Desai — to the case as accused based on the witness’s testimony. Mirajkar was removed by the state government in 2018 for making the plea.

Previously, the state government refused to grant sanction to prosecute them. Asiya had challenged this decision before the High Court, which had said that there was no need for interference in the government’s decision. This order too has been challenged by Asiya and is currently pending before the Supreme Court. Currently, four accused are facing trial for Yunus’s murder, including dismissed cop Sachin Waze.