JOIN USSecurity has been beefed up in Mumbai ahead of the execution of the Mumbai serial blasts case convict Yakub Memon.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who holds the home portfolio, reviewed security arrangements at a high level meeting of police officials including DGP Sanjeev Dayal and Mumbai police commissioner Rakesh Maria. He asked the police to be on full alert and deploy uniformed security personnel on the roads.
"Law will take its own course. I appeal to everyone to maintain restraint," Fadnavis told reporters at Vidhan Bhavan Complex here.
Additional Director General of Police (Prisons) Meeran Borwankar, who is based in Pune, is currently camping in Nagpur. Yakub’s elder brother Suleiman Memon, his cousin and the family’s close aid Usman Memon are also in Nagpur. His family members requested to be present in the prison during the execution.
If the execution goes ahead, his family may claim Yakub’s body and would insist on burial in Mumbai. Yakub Memon is the only one of 12 people whose death sentence in the 1993 blasts case has been upheld by the Supreme Court. A total of 12 of the 100 accused were sentenced to death by the designated TADA court - of which one died in hospital before the Supreme Court took up the matter. Sentences of the ten others were commuted to life.
In Mumbai, Maria has directed all Deputy Commissioners, Additional Commissioners and Assistant Commissioners to be present in the city’s sensitive areas. Quick Response Teams of police have also been deployed at a few places including the Al Hussaini building in Mahim area where the Memon family lives.