Jail authorities directed to provide proper medical care to Memons

Mumbai, Sep 20 (UNI) The TADA court here today directed superintendent of the Arthur Road Jail to provide adequate medical facilities to three Memon brothers who had sought bail on medical grounds even before they were found guilty in the 1993 serial bomb blasts.

Special court judge P D Kode also directed the jail authorities that if needed, the three brothers should be admitted to a government hospital. He then, adjourned the Memon brothers' bail plea till September 27.

The designated TADA court had, earlier on September 18, deferred till today the hearing into the bail plea filed by the three Memon brothers after the defence sought time to argue the matter.

The trio -- Yakub, Essa and Yusuf, brother of prime absconding accused Tiger Memon, had earlier moved bail application on medical grounds even before they were held guilty by the TADA court on September 12.

Yakub Memon, a chartered accountant, had moved for bail on the grounds that he is in a state of depression and needed psychiatric treatment, which is not possible in the jail premises. Yusuf contended that he was suffering from schizophrenia and Essa said he had a brain tumour.

Earlier, the prosecution had sought death penalty for the three brothers and life imprisonment for their sister-in-law Rubina Memon.

The court had earlier granted interim bail to Rubina Memon on humanitarian grounds as she was the mother of two minor children and had also to take care of her ailing mother-in-law Hanifa Memon who was earlier discharged from the case for lack of sufficient evidence.

The Memon family's counsel Harshad Ponda had pleaded for lesser punishment for them and opposed the prosecution's appeal for capital punishment and life imprisonment.

While replying to the prosecution's submission, Adv Ponda said that prosecution had cited various apex court judgements in the assassinations of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. In most of these cases, the Supreme Court had awarded capital punishment on the accused who were deeply involved in the conspiracy but awarded lesser punishment to the accused who were not directly involved in the case and conspiracy. In the present case, his clients were not deeply involved in the conspiracy nor were they directly linked in the conspiracy that was hatched after the demolition of the disputed structure in Ayodhya in December 1992, he had argued.

UNI XR MAZ VD HT1820