In a dramatic move, a team of Criminal Investigation Department from Pune, arrested yesterday evening four Bombay police encounter specialists on charges of murdering Khawaja Yunus, in January 2003. The arrests of the top notch encounter specialists Police Inspector Prafull Bhosale, Assistant Inspectors Hemant Desai, V.N. Mane and Nitin Hemane by the CID has caused jitters in the police ranks of Bombay. Another Assistant Inspector Sachin Vaze, had been arrested last year in this connection and is under suspension. The arrested cops were detained at the local office of the state CID at Sewree and will be produced before the court this morning, said a source from the CID in Pune.Khawaja Yunus was arrested in December 2002 and accused of planting bombs in a local municipal bus which exploded in the busy Ghatkopar suburb in Bombay, which killed two people, an injured several others. Suspended Assistant Inspector Sachin Vaze, who took Khawaja Yunus for investigations to Aurangabad in January 2003, had then stated that the alleged accused had escaped from custody, when the police jeep in which Khwaja and the police team were traveling, overturned near Parner in Ahmednagar, and alleged that the accused had escaped taking advantage of the accident. But the parents of Yunus cried foul and said that their son had not escaped but had been murdered by Vaze and his team. Another accused Dr. Abdul Mateen Basit, a lecturer, who was also accused in the bomb blast, told the CID team that during interrogation in the police custody, he saw the deceased Yunus vomiting lot of blood and also heard his cries when being beaten and tortured.
| I think they need some pointers from the Banglas. They simply don't do the escape-crossfire thing well at all. |