In a jolt to incarcerated underworld gangster Abu Salem, the Konkan divisional commissionerate on Saturday rejected his application seeking a 45-day parole to get married for the second time.
Fifty-year-old Salem, who is serving life imprisonment in the 1993 Mumbai sertial blasts case at the Taloja Central Jail, had made an application to the jail authorities for a 45-day parole for entering into a wed-lock with 28-year-old Sayed Bahar Kausar alias Heena on May 5 under the Special Marriages Act, 1954.
In his application, Salem had stated that he was behind the bars for the past 12 years, 3 months and 14 days and had neither availed parole or furlough during the entire period.
Having received Salem’s application from the Taloja jail authorities on March 27, the Konkan Divisional Commissioner had sought a report from the Thane police to check on the information provided by the gangster and the antecedents of Heena’s family.
Among other things, Salem had stated in his application that he would stay at Heena’s residence at Mumbra in Thane district, during the parole period.
Mohammed Rafique Sayyed and Abdul Razak Memon, who are ostensibly the cousins, had stood guarantor for the gangster.
Apart from recording the statements of Sayyed, the police recorded the statements of Heena and her mother at the Mumbra police station, which the Thane Police Commissionerate incorporated in its report submitted to the Konkan Divisional Commissioner.
After pursuing the report submitted by the Thane police, the Konkan Divisional Commissionerate also examined other issues relating to the grant of parole or otherwise to Salem. The division authorities finally rejected Salem’s Parole application.
Official sources said that one of the grounds cited for the rejection of Salem’s application was that under the revised parole rules of the Maharashtra government in 2016, the parole applications made by the convicts serving sentences for serious offences like terror-murder charges can be rejected by the authorities concerned.
Salem, who was among the seven accused tried in the second phase of bomb blasts trial, was extradited to India along with his girl friend Monica Bedi on November 11, 2005, after a prolonged legal process in Portugal lasting three years.
On September 7 last year, a Special Terrorism and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act court handed out life imprisonment to Salem as part of the part-two trial of the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case.
By way of a life term, the court has sentenced Abu Salem to imprisonment till death. But, under the extradition treaty between India and Portugal, Salem can be sentenced to a maximum 25 years’ imprisonment. That being the case, the Government of India, through an executive order, will in likelihood commute Salem’s sentence to maximum of 25 years’ imprisonment.
Apart from serving a life sentence in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts, Salem is also simultaneously serving a life sentence handed to him by a Special TADA court for his involvement in the murder of city-based builder Pradeep Jain in 1995.
Salem had earlier been married to Mumbai-based Sumaira Jumani and was romantically involved with actress Monica Bedi, with whom he came to be extradited from Portugal.
It may be recalled that a 26-year-0ld woman, apparently it was Heena herself, had approached Salem in the jail in early 2015 and shows interest in marrying him. On his part, Salem himself – in submission made before a TADA court on June 29, 2015 – had pressed for the consideration of the woman’s application to marry him and give him permission to do so.
Salem’s offer to marry the woman comes eight months after the CBI—investigating the 1992 Mumbai serial blasts case -- had told the TADA court here that the photograph that showed the two together appeared to be a morphed one.
Subsequently, the TADA court directed the police to conduct an inquiry after a newspaper carried a news report that Salem married her “over the phone” during a train journey when he was being taken by police to lucknow for a court hearing. Salem had himself dismissed the news report as baseless.