‘ATS took me away, I didn’t flee’

Usmani submitted this letter to the special Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act court here on 10 December, when the charges were framed against him and other 22 men in connection with emails purportedly sent by IM taking responsibility for blasts in Delhi and Hyderabad in 2008.

Usmani fled from the sessions court here on 20 September and was arrested by ATS on 28 October from near India-Nepal border.

But he has presented a different version in the letter submitted to the special MCOCA judge AL Pansare. According to him, on 20 September, as he was talking to his nephew in the court premises, two ATS officers took them out of the premises.

‘They disclosed their identity and told the escort policemen around us to tell the court that Usmani had fled,’ says the letter, accessed by PTI.

They were taken to a farmhouse in Kasara (in neighbouring Thane district), it says, adding that ‘after leaving me there they took my nephew somewhere else’.

He further claims that ATS officials visited him thereafter a few times at the farmhouse, and asked him to become an approver in the case. Usmani also alleges that special public prosecutor Raja Thakare also visited him, and asked him to become approver.