Former API Deshmukh fails to identify 7 cops facing trial

Ajit Deshmukh was among the three policemen indicted by Justice B N Srikrishna for the raid on the bakery. The other two were then Joint CP R D Tyagi, who led the raid

Mumbai: One of the policemen who was part of the raid on Suleman Usman Bakery during the January 1993 riots testified in court on Wednesday. Seven policemen are facing trial for the murder of eight unarmed Muslims during the incident.

1993 Mumbai Serial Bomb Blasts 1993 - Totally devastated building in Worli after a strong explosion. (HT archive)

Ajit Deshmukh was among the three policemen indicted by Justice B N Srikrishna for the raid on the bakery. The other two were then Joint CP R D Tyagi, who led the raid, and Inspector Lahane, of the Special Operations Squad (SOS), which accompanied him.

However, Deshmukh was not made an accused in the murder case filed against Tyagi and 17 others by the Special Task Force (STF) that investigated the incident in 2001.

Now retired, Deshmukh was then an API in the Crime Branch, CID, and R D Tyagi’s staff officer. He had accompanied Tyagi to Suleman Usman Bakery on January 9, 1993, along with other members of the SOS. However, in court, he could not identify any of the seven accused policemen currently facing trial for murder, all of whom had been part of the raid.

Repeating his 1993 statement after the incident, Deshmukh testified that between 12.30 and 12.45 pm, on January 9, 1993, on being informed that a police picket on Mohammed Ali Road was being fired at from the rooftop of the bakery, Tyagi and his men went there. When they reached the road outside the bakery, they were attacked by bottles and stones, said Deshmukh, following which he fired one round in the air in self-defence. He had also sustained a minor injury, he said.

Deshmukh also said that Tyagi had ordered Inspector Lahane to lob tear gas shells on the rooftop, where he was informed, miscreants, armed with a sten gun and revolvers, were standing. Since the inmates of the bakery were not opening the door, he said, Tyagi ordered it to be forced open. Deshmukh said he heard gunshots after the SOS and other policemen went in; after that, the din quietened down. He said, 78 persons were taken into custody, but the gun-wielding miscreants managed to escape.

He told the court that he did not know if any weapons were recovered from the bakery.

The Suleman Usman Bakery incident was investigated in detail by the Srikrishna Commission of Inquiry into the ‘92-’93 riots. In its report, the Commission had said that the police version of the raid did not inspire credence. None of the eight who died in the raid had a criminal record. No sten gun or weapons were recovered, nor did any policeman sustain any gunshot injury. The STF charge sheet in the case also dismissed the police version.

Tyagi, Lahane and seven other policemen were discharged in 2003, while nine policemen who were found to have fired during the incident, remained accused.