Mumbai: Fifteen years after the custodial death of 27-year-old Khwaja Yunus, an eyewitness told the Sessions Court on Wednesday that he saw four police personnel from Ghatkopar police station assault Khwaja and that he was vomiting blood.
The witness, a doctor by profession, deposed before Judge V.S. Padalkar, and said that he was arrested with Khwaja on January 6, 2003, and they were taken to Ghatkopar police station.
He said that he saw inspector Praful Bhosle, sub-inspector Hemant Desai, sub-inspector Ashok Khot, and additional police inspector Rajaram Vhanamane from the Ghatkopar crime investigation department slap and punch Khwaja in the stomach.
The doctor said that they were kept in two separate rooms, and he saw Khwaja vomiting blood and then he never saw him again.
An application will now be made to make these officers accused. They were earlier arrested, but released on bail and could not be charged with the death as there was no sanction to prosecute them.
The doctor will be cross-examined by advocate Sudeep Pasbola on February 7.
Four police officers — assistant police inspector Sachin Vaze and three personnel, Rajendra Tiwari, Rajaram Nikam and Sunil Desai — are being tried in the case. They are charged with conspiracy, destruction of evidence, and murder.
Khwaja worked in Dubai as a software engineer and was visiting his family in India in December 2002. He was holidaying at his native place in Parbhani, when a bomb ripped through a BEST bus in Ghatkopar, killing two and injuring over 50. He was picked up by the Ghatkopar police and was remanded in police custody under the now-repealed Prevention of Terrorism Act, in January 2003.
Witnesses said Khwaja vomited blood for three days and later died in custody. The police have maintained that he ran away when he was being taken from Mumbai to Aurangabad in a jeep.
Meanwhile, the accused have been moving applications to delay the trial, and the last one said that the charge of murder cannot be invoked against them as the prosecution has failed to prove it.
As per records of 2015, Khwaja is among the 106 prisoners, who had died in police custody over the last 15 years in Maharashtra.
