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Journalism of Courage
MUMBAI, May 21: Counsel for the Mumbai police Shrikant Bhat today maintained that the encounter killing of peanut vendor Abu Sayama alias Javed Fawda was neither a case of mistaken identity nor was it fake.
Bhat said the person who was killed in an encounter at Ballard Pier on August 26, 1997, is the same person against whom a case of attempt to murder was registered at Shivaji Park in 1996 and the person whose sister Rubina lodged a missing complaint with the Bandra police on August 28, 1997. Bhat said the accused8217;s fingerprints in the Shivaji Park case and that of the person killed in the encounter tally with each other.
He said there was no admissible evidence that the deceased was picked up by the police after offering prayers at a Bandra mosque two days prior to his death. The evidence recorded in this connection was based on hearsay accounts and not on an eye-witness account.
Bhat argued that the names of Fawda, along with Wasim, Rauf Raja and Rashid, were disclosed by Javed Kaliya, an accused in the Gulshan Kumar murder case. This information was issued in a memo to officers of the Criminal Intelligence Unit by Assistant Commissioner of Police L R Rao.
Although API Vasant Dhoble had admitted that he knew some of the accused named in the memo, and had also visited their residences to make enquires, counsel for petitioners had failed to elaboratehow he knew them, stated Bhat. He added that if the memo issued by Rao could not be disputed, the encounter could also not be disputed.
