'Will Fight Till Last Breath, Want My Son's Killers Punished' : 74-Year Old Mother's Quest For Justice In 20 Year Old Custodial Death Case

“A mother just wants her child, they should have given him to me. They killed my innocent son, don’t they deserve to be punished? He deserves justice. Any mother will feel that her son’s killers are punished,” said an ailing Asiya Begum while talking to this Correspondent.

Asiya Begum, 74, is the mother of Khwaja Yunus who was about 27-year-old when he “disappeared” from the police’s hold in 2003 while being taken for investigations from Mumbai to Aurangabad. Yunus was a working software engineer in the United Arab Emirates before his arrest. He was taken into custody by Mumbai’s Ghatkopar police for his alleged involvement in a blast case in a Bus which killed two passengers and injured many others.

Initially led by Yunus’s father Khwaja Ayub and later by the mother Asiya, first a Sessions Judge and later the Bombay High Court came to a conclusion that Yunus’s disappearance needed to be investigated as a murder case.

This was based on the testimony on Yunus’ co-accused in the case, who told a Sessions Judge during an inquiry, that Yunus was tortured in police custody, and that he had vomited blood after one of the officers kicked him on the chest. The witnesses said that he must have been killed due to the police torture.

Yunus “disappeared” on January 7, 2003 – and now, after 20 years of that incident, Asiya Begum has filed a petition seeking to set aside an order by the trial judge, by which the judge allowed the special public prosecutor to withdraw an application filed under section 319 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

This application, filed by former Special PP Dhiraj Mirajkar way back in February 2018 sought to add four policemen as accused in the case. They are Prafulla Bhosale, Rajaram Vhanmane, Hemant Desai and Ashok Khot. Four other policemen – those who allegedly took Yunus to Aurangabad for investigation and then staged an accident to show that he escaped taking the benefit of that accident – are facing trial in the case, which has barely moved in so many years. These policemen are – dismissed cop Sachin Waze, Rajendra Tiwari, Sunil Desai and Rajaram Nikam.

Waze was suspended for 16 years in this case. He was subsequently reinstated only to be dismissed from service after being arrested in connection with explosives found near industrialist Mukesh Ambani’s house in 2021.

Current Special Public Prosecutor Pradeep Gharat had filed an application before the trial court on August 3, 2022 to withdraw the application under section 319 of the CrPC. His predecessor Dhiraj MIrajkar had filed the application based on the deposition of the only witness who has deposed so far in the case, Yunus’s co-accused Abdul Mateen, in February 2018.

Mateen has consistently maintained that he saw Prafulla Bhosale, Rajaram Vhanmane, Hemant Desai and Ashok Khot torture Yunus in custody during which Desai kicked Yunus of the chest resulting in Yunus vomiting blood.

The Session Judge, by an order on September 7, 2022, allowed the Special PP’s application to withdraw the section 319 application.

The grounds mentioned in the petition filed through Advocate Chetan Mali are:

• The Sessions Judge committed gross injustice and error by passing the impugned order
• The Judge knowingly disregarded the Supreme Court order of January 6, 2022 (by which the Supreme Court had allowed the trial court to decide the application under 319 of CrPC on merits)
• The Judge’s act, therefore, amounts to judicial indiscipline
• That the Sessions Judge failed to appreciate that the State was well represented before the Supreme Court (on January 6, 2022)
• There is no question of withdrawal of the application as it only brought notice of the court the “evidence” of commission of crime by person other than those charged. The duty was cast upon the court alone thereafter to take cognizance of the fact brought before the court
• The court has no power to ignore evidence noticed/presented/disclosed before it
• Section 319 ensures just and fair prosecution of cases and therefore is necessary to act upon as and when required to prevent abuse of process of court or otherwise to secure ends of justice
• The judge erred in holding that the victim of the crime has no right and he/she can only act through the Special PP
• The judge failed to appreciate that in the present case the victim has been more concerned with justice rather than the State

Gharat is the fourth lawyer to be appointed as a Special PP in the case, Mirajkar was the third. Mirajkar was removed from the case immediately after he filed the application seeking to add four policemen as accused in the case.

“What else can a mother do but fight for her son? We want to fight but the prosecution isn’t handling our case properly. The State is not allowing us a prosecutor of our choice. We had applied for Dhiraj Mirajkar, but he was removed. They didn’t ask us and the PP was just appointed. If there is a good public prosecutor, the accused don’t show up in court. Its been 20 years now,” Asiya Begum told this Correspondent.

Asiya, who is suffering from asthama, and therefore her blood pressure doesn’t stay in control, says she has full faith in the judiciary and there will be justice – if not today, tomorrow. “Jab tak jaan hai tab tak ladungi (I will fight till my last breath),” she says before ending the conversation.