The mysterious case of Khwaja Yunus

A MURDER, A COVER-UP
NOW, two years after he disappeared—allegedly escaped from a police vehicle that turned turtle—a fresh probe by the state Criminal Investigation Department has become a source of much embarrassment to the Mumbai police.

On March 5, senior inspector and encounter specialist Praful Bhosle and three other policemen were arrested. They were charged with murder and destroying evidence.

Earlier, assistant police inspector Sachin Vaze was arrested on the same charges, suspended and later released on bail. Vaze, who was leading the police team when Yunus allegedly escaped, filed an FIR that was scrapped by the court. Not many are now buying his version of the events that night. (See Debunking Vaze’s Theory

Certainly not the CID. But the CID is in a somewhat awkward spot, having to duel with its own police colleagues.

When Bhosle was produced in court, his encounter specialist friends like senior police inspectors Vijay Salaskar, Suhail Buddah and inspector Ravindranath Angre and scores of Shiv Sainiks gathered outside in a show of solidarity.

The arrested policemen’s wives began a signature campaign. Their lawyer, the high-profile Satish Maneshinde, even called the CID officials conduits of the Al Qaeda, besides questioning CID Deputy Commissioner of Police Sudesh Padvi’s integrity.

FACE OF PARBHANI
SO, Parbhani’s anonymous young man is now the desolate town’s best known face. And nobody believes the academically-inclined boy who scored 92 per cent in his class XII exams could have been a terrorist.

‘‘These things were far from his real life,’’ Yunus’s friend of 12 years, Syed Arifuddin, says, on the phone from Parbhani.

Arifuddin and Yunus were together for two years at Zakir Hussain College, Parbhani, before Yunus went to Aurangabad to pursue instrumentation engineering.

In communally sensitive Parbhani, where industries came to a grinding halt a decade ago, he struggled. And then he went to Dubai and to Germany briefly, for training.

From helping his dad run the STD booth to his first flight—he had found take off scary, his brother reveals—Yunus had become his family’s hope. He planned to use his salary to do up his modest home and buy a car.

He sent his mother pictures of him in his new suit, ‘‘one full length and one close up,’’ Yunus’s mother Aasiya Begum says. The photograph now accompanies most newspaper write-ups on his case.

His quietness hid an ambition to make it big. He was the only one of four siblings to leave Parbhani, to study and work.

IN CUSTODY
IN Aurangabad, he met Dr Abdul Mateen, an MD in Forensic medicine and Toxicology, now co-accused in the bomb blast case.

And it was Mateen’s statement in court that, for the first time, made a dent in the police theory.

At 1.30 pm on January 6, Mateen said, he had seen from the adjoining room of the Ghatkopar Crime Intelligence Unit (CIU), an officer beating Yunus with belts.

Another blow and Yunus was crying in pain. Mateen saw Yunus vomit blood and then never saw him again.

Inspector Arun Borude took Mateen to the Powai unit, he said, and warned him against repeating what he’d seen.

The following day, Borude informed Mateeen that Yunus had escaped.

SOLIDARITY FORCE
NOW, everyone from Bhosle’s colleagues to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Shiv Sena, are pitching this as a battle between cold-blooded terrorists and a police force fighting valiantly for justice, however twisted.

Bhosle commands unqualified respect from his peers in the 1983 batch of sub-inspectors. And to juniors like sub-inspector Daya Nayak, he was a guru, a teacher whose ‘‘humiliation’’ will not be tolerated.

Inspector Ravindranath Angre (54 encounters under his belt) says they’ve all contributed to the crackdown on the underworld, ‘‘which must be very happy at incidents like this’’.

But the resentment runs deeper.

At least 19 police officers—including then commissioner of Mumbai police R S Sharma and Sridhar Vagal and deputy commissioner of police Pradeep Sawant have been arrested in the multi-crore fake stamps scandal. Six policemen, including IPS officer Rahul Gopal, were arrested this year for corruption, 24 policemen last year.

That’s why the arrest of Bhosle weighs so heavy.