The Bombay high court has decided to take up the petition filed by the family of suspected Indian Mujahideen terrorist Quatil Siddiqui, who was killed under mysterious circumstances in Pune’s Yerawada jail. The petition seeks an impartial probe by a central agency or a court-appointed Special Investigating Team into his death.
The suspect was arrested by a special cell of the Delhi police and chargesheeted for various terror-related crimes including his alleged role in the 2010 German Bakery blast. The Maharashtra ATS took his custody on May 2 last year, after he was accused of having planted a bomb at the Dagdu Seth Halwai Ganesh temple in Pune on February 13, 2010, the day a bomb blast outside the bakery took 17 lives.
Siddiqui was reportedly killed by two inmates in the high-security jail on June 8 in 2012. However, alleging that there is something suspicious about his death, his family moved the HC.
“The prime motive to kill Siddiqui lay with Maharashtra ATS as he was allegedly negating their theory that Himayat Baig (sentenced to death by a Pune court in the German Bakery blast) was involved in the crime. Mr Kadam from the Maharashtra ATS had even participated in the investigations carried out by the Delhi police’s special cell,” lawyer Mehmood Pracha, appearing for Siddiqui’s family, told The Asian Age.
The petition states that the special cell of the Delhi police kept Siddiqui in its remand for almost three months claiming that he was involved in various crimes. It claims that the state ATS has framed the deceased Siddiqui not in the German Bakery blasts as claimed by the special cell, but for the alleged attempt to plant a bomb in the Pune temple. The petition states that there was no record of the said crime till the arrest of the deceased.