MUMBAI: For Asiya Begum, Sachin Waze’s arrest seems like “poetic justice”. The 73-year-old mother of Khwaja Yunus, a bomb blast suspect who disappeared in 2003, has waited patiently for years for the tide to turn against the erstwhile encounter specialist.
Fighting for “justice after the murder of my son’’, she said she was never a match for “the powerful Waze”. But his arrest showed that “there is always light at the end of the tunnel”.
“We ran from pillar to post to get the trial started in my son’s murder case, but Waze is so powerful that he managed to delay the judicial process for so many years,” she said, hoping Sunday’s developments will lead to a relook at the criminal case against Waze pending in a Sewree trial court.
Yunus who worked in Dubai, had come to India on November 28, 2002 to visit his family. He arrived in his hometown Parbhani on November 30. On December 2, a blast took place in Ghatkopar. According to his mother’s petition, Yunus was taken into custody on December 25, brought to Mumbai and handed over to a police team in Powai the next day. Two others, Mohammed Abdul Mateen and Shaikh Zaheer, were also held. A fourth person named Muzammil was arrested, but later discharged.
Her petition alleged that “during interrogation” Yunus and the others were “assaulted and tortured”. When she saw her son on December 27, he appeared weak. Police later said he died trying to escape while they were shifting him to Aurangabad for further investigation.
She alleged that “to conceal the custodial torture and… custodial death”, Waze and three constables faked his escape and registered a “false case with the Parner police” on January 7, 2003. They alleged that he fled by “jumping” out of the police jeep just before it met with an accident and fell into a gorge.
The Bombay high court had accepted her contention that the ‘escape’ FIR was false and had on April 7, 2004 directed that the statement of Yunus’s co-accused Abdul Mateen, who alleged torture in custody, be treated as an FIR for a case of murder against Waze and others. The HC also directed the state and Mumbai police chief to suspend Waze and three others and initiate an inquiry against them. The state had gone to the SC to challenge the HC order. But the SC declined to intervene. Yunus’s body was never found.