New Delhi: After former RAW top officer B Raman's article outlined how Yakub Memon was surrendered, Shantanu Sen, former head of the CBI's special task force said the 1993 Mumbai blast convicts and other members of family were 'induced to return to India', according to a media report.
"We learnt from our sources that there was internal disagreement between the Memon family on staying in Pakistan. They (Yakub and his family) felt unsafe, ghutan (claustrophobic).
"They also felt that maybe they will not be able to survive this atmosphere and maybe Pakistanis will not trust them," Sen said while talking to NDTV.
He said that the CBI used all its contacts in Pakistan to "induce the Memons to believe that their safety lay in India".
He also said that multiple Indian agencies were in touch with the Memon family, including the Intelligence Bureau, and RAW, India's external spy agency.
"We offered them the great justice of India," Sen said.
He said that the CBI used all its contacts in Pakistan to "induce the Memons to believe that their safety lay in India".
Sen's statement is made public at the time when the Supreme Court is hearing a petition by Yakub Memon challenging his death warrant.
Yakub Memon had moved the apex court contending that the death warrant for his execution was issued before he could have exhausted the legal remedies available to him and when his curative petition was pending consideration by the court.
The apex court on July 21 rejected Memon's curative petition saying it was void of merit. On the same day, Memon filed a mercy petition before the Maharashtra governor seeking commutation of his death sentence to life imprisonment.
An article by former RAW officer B. Raman, which came to light recently, had him opposing the death sentence to Memon stating that he was arrested in Kathmandu on the condition that he would not be hanged. In return, Memon would help the Indian agencies in exposing Pakistan's role in the blasts.
Former apex court judge, Justice Harjit Singh Bedi said in a letter to The Indian Express that the apex court should take suo muto notice of this article and only after hearing both sides, remand the case to the trial court to take further evidence on the question of the sentence or, in the alternative, the evidence itself. He also mentioned that he was against imposition of death penalty.
Memon and 11 others were slapped with the death penalty by the special TADA court in July 2007 for the 1993 bomb blasts in which 257 people were killed and 712 were injured.
Meanwhile, demand to commute Yakub Memon's death sentence is growing with every passing day.
After more than 300 eminent citizens including MPs, ex judges and lawyers wrote the President for mercy, Congress MLAs and MLCs of Maharashtra on Tuesday sent a letter to the president requesting him to grant clemeny to Yakub Memon.
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