Four months after a bomb blast ripped through a bus in suburban Ghatkopar claiming two lives and injuring 30 people, the Mumbai police on Wednesday filed charge sheets against five accused persons in a special court under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
This is the first case in Maharashtra in which POTA has been applied. Earlier, in another case, suspected Al Qaeda terrorist Mohammed Afroze was booked under POTA, but the charge was later dropped.
The 1,100-page charge sheet was filed three-and-a-half months after the arrest of Dr Mohammed Abdul Mateen, Shaikh Mohammed Muzamil, Zahir Ahmed Bashir Ahmed, Imran Rehman Khan, and Mohammed Altaf Ismail.
All of them were charged with conspiring to cause the blast in the bus.
Another accused, Sayed Khwaja Yunus, who mysteriously escaped from police custody on January 7, was shown as absconding.
In the case of co-accused Taufiq Ahmed, who was arrested a few days ago, the police will file a supplementary charge sheet later.
Besides them, the charge sheet mentions five others wanted in connection with the case. Among them is Sayeed Aziz Sayeed Rasheed alias Imran who was killed in an encounter in Hyderabad recently.
Prosecutor Rohini Salian informed the court that police would seek non-bailable warrants against the wanted men on Thursday.
Altogether 191 persons have been cited as witnesses in the charge sheet. The police had obtained sanction from the government on April 5 to prosecute the accused.
According to the police, the conspiracy was hatched in the hostel room of Dr Mateen, who was attached to the government-run J J Hospital.
The accused have been charged with hatching the conspiracy between March and December 2002 in the J J Hospital hostel. They have also been charged with endangering the lives of people by indulging in terrorist acts and sending provocative messages to fundamentalist Muslims.
The accused have also been charged with developing links with banned organisations Jaish-e-Mohammed, Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Students Islamic Movement of India and propagating their causes by indulging in terrorist acts.
Copies of the charge sheet were served on them. Police submitted a report on Yunus's disappearance from custody on January 7 when a jeep carrying him to Aurangabad for investigation met with an accident.
The court had ordered a judicial probe into the case and ordered the state government to pay Rs 5,000 per month to the family of the accused unless he was traced dead or alive.
The charge sheet was filed in the court of designated Judge A P Bhangale who ordered the chief secretary to the state government to file a status report on the inquiry conducted by him into Yunus's disappearance.
Prosecutor Rohini Salian said the chief secretary's report would be filed within a week. She also urged the court to withhold the names and addresses of witnesses in camera.
Defence lawyer Majeed Memon raised objection to the report filed by the police today on Yunus's disappearance saying it was 'cryptic'.